Edward Caledon Bruce
American, 1825 – 1900
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Edward Caledon Bruce was an American artist, author, and publisher. Born in Winchester, Virginia, to educated and wealthy parents, he became deaf in his teens due to complications from scarlet fever. It was around this same time Bruce began showing an interest in art. Several years later, he studied under Thomas Sully in Philadelphia. Bruce kept a diary in which he wrote "thank God I have my sight yet - all Nature can speak to me through that sense." He married Eliza T. Hubard with whom he had two daughters.
He was a successful author of several books, and the publisher and editor of the Winchester Virginian newspaper. He contributed articles to national magazines, including Harper's Weekly and Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. Bruce was a slaveowner and supported the secession of Virginia during the Civil War. Unable to fight due to his hearing loss, Bruce nonetheless provided artwork of the war, including sketches of fights and portraits of notable people. His most famous work, a portrait of General Robert E. Lee, was painted in the fall and winter of 1864-65. His other portraits include that of General Stonewall Jackson and Colonel John S. Mosby. He continued painting after the war and died in 1900.
Over 70 of Bruce's paintings, mostly portraits, survive and are exhibited in places such as the National Portrait Gallery, the Virginia Historical Society, the Abram's Delight historic house museum, and the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley, which owns the largest single collection of his portratis.
