After 31 Years - Still An Incredible Image



Posted: Friday, June 22, 2007

by
The GOOD BOOK Company

Thirty-one years ago, artist Arnold Friberg painted "The  Prayer at Valley Forge" in celebration of our  country's bi-centennial year, 1976. He  succeeded in painting a masterpiece that is still incredibly popular 31 years  later. Friberg revered George Washington even as a boy. At age twelve he drew a picture of him astride his white horse. Along with learning  the American legend of his praying at Valley    Forge, Pennsylvania, Friberg's  deep inspiration from his boyhood for George Washington never left him.

It wasn't until Arnold Friberg was in his early sixties, about fifty years later, that he returned to George Washington as the subject and painted him again, but this time with a lifetime of honed skills as a  master artist. The result was the inspired painting entitled, "The Prayer at Valley Forge."

"The Prayer at Valley Forge" depicts George Washington kneeling in the woods on one knee in the snow with his  head bowed in prayer with his strong horse near in the full power and richness that  only oil on canvas can produce.

Arnold Friberg says, "To prepare for this painting and to insure accuracy in trees and landscape, I made a pilgrimage to Valley Forge, in the dead of winter. It was deserted, the  wind moaning through the great trees, silent, lonely, cold. It was a cold that chilled to the bone, a cold that froze my fingers until I could no longer  sketch nor even snap my camera."

At the Smithsonian Military History  Museum, Friberg found and made accurate sketches of the very uniform that was worn by Washington. He was also able to sketch his sword, spurs, bits and stirrups that are on view at the Valley Forge Museum and his  home at Mount Vernon.  Friberg studied every image of George Washington that was made by artists during Washington's  lifetime. Two men remarked on Washington's huge powerful hands, so Friberg superbly painted Washington with large, strong hands clasped in prayer.

"What I really tried for was to recall the pain, the cold of that cruel winter of 1777-1778, and to pay tribute to the tall and  heavy-burdened man who alone held our struggling nation together," says Friberg. We can all agree he succeeded.

The success of this painting is no doubt the fact that the  spirit of Valley Forge calls out to us from the image. In it we feel the cold, the devotion, the suffering, the pain, the  yearning for liberty, the birth pangs of a nation and George Washington's only  hope, utter dependence upon God's will alone.

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