Mural -- Back Home: April 1865, Pleasant Hill Post Office
N 38° 47.131 W 094° 16.400
15S E 389406 N 4293745
The great artist Tom Lea of El Paso,Texas captured a scene of the return of four people to their land in 1865 after the Civil War was
over. A classic painting in this "Burnt District" in Missouri.
Waymark Code: WMBTW1
Location: Missouri, United States
Date Posted: 06/20/2011
Views: 7
This mural (oil on canvas 5 and 1/2 x 12 and 1/2 feet)looks down on the lobby of the Pleasant Hill, Missouri post office. The subject of the mural are four people returning to their land in 1865.
They had been forced to leave in 1863 because of the martial
law order #11 issued in August 1863 by Union General Thomas
Ewing to restore order to the Missouri/Kansas border counties
of Missouri.
In the starkly gray mural we see a family that has returned to
its home to find the house burned to the ground, the fences
down and the fields gone back to weeds. the figures represent
three generations: and old man and woman for whom the desolate
landscape portrays the destruction and horror that the war has brought them; a Confederate veteran in gray and his wife who
have returned to rebuild, and their child who carries the hope
of a new and better life.
Tom Lea was born in El Paso, Texas, July 11,1907 and died in 2001. He was commissioned to do this artwork for the Section of Fine Arts
,Federal Works Agency, Public Buildings Administration in an
open anonymous competition.**
**From Pleasant Hill Post Office handout describing the mural.
Project type: Mural/Painting
Date built or created: Circa 1938 and installed at Post Office by artist in 1939
Location: Pleasant Hill, Missouri Post Office
City: Pleasant Hill, Missouri
Condition: Pristine condition
Website for additional information: [Web Link]
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