Gilbert Gaul, Civil War Painter

Gaul's Tennessee years ended in disappointment. His peak came in 1893, when he won numerous awards at the World's Exposition in Chicago, but his popularity waned, and by 1904 he was teaching at Cumberland Female College in McMinnville. He opened a Nashville studio and in 1907 published the first of a planned series of paintings called With the Confederate Colors; it met with little success and the rest were canceled. He then returned to New Jersey and painted World War I scenes. His farm now lies inside Fall Creek Falls State Park.

What the plaque says

Gilbert Gaul, Civil War Painter Just south of here was the studio of Gilbert Gaul, one of the best painters of American Civil War scenes. After being elected the youngest member of the National Academy of Design in 1882, his "Holding the Line at all Hazards" won an Academy Gold Medal. Gaul moved here from New York in 1881 after inheriting a tract of land. His most prolific work was accomplished here, engaging local folk as models.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fall Creek Falls State Park — 1.5 mi
  A New Deal park on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, where Cane Creek has cut a gorge and a 256-foot waterfall drops into it.
• Rock Island State Park — 18 mi
  A park where the Collins, Rocky and Caney Fork rivers meet at the head of Center Hill Lake, with a gorge of waterfalls below a 1917 dam and the remains of a cotton-mill town.
• Savage Gulf State Park — 22 mi
  Roughly 19,000 acres of gorge and sandstone bluff on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, a state park of its own since 2022, with the Stone Door and a National Natural Landmark.
• Rhea County Courthouse — 23 mi
  The 1891 Dayton courthouse where John T. Scopes was tried in July 1925 for teaching evolution, with the second-floor courtroom restored and a trial museum in the basement.

More markers nearby

• Trail Of Tears circa 1838 — 7.2 mi
• Camp Forrest/Forrest Camp Spencer Artillery Range -ca. 1941-1946- — 7.2 mi
• Burritt College — 7.7 mi
• Bragg's March to Kentucky — 9.5 mi