George Lambdin is best known today for his floral still life paintings, especially roses grown in his garden. During his life, he was most closely associated with sentimental genre paintings, which won him acclaim. A lifelong Pennsylvania resident, Lambdin studied in Philadelphia and briefly in Munich, Paris, and Rome. He painted many portraits of Philadelphia women, which often included roses. Lambdin was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of a successful portrait painter, who gave him his early artistic training. He moved with his family to Philadelphia at the age of eight. When he first began exhibiting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1848, Lambdin was painting sentimental scenes of the Civil War along with subjects that involved children. Within these works, he included flowers, usually roses. Later in his career, Lambdin turned to floral still life painting.

Painted during the last year of the Civil War, The Consecration recalls the romantic spirit in which many men went off to battle. In a comfortable Yankee library, filled with the furnishings and flowers, a beautiful woman kisses the sword of her officer, dedicating it to a noble cause. The symbolism of Lambdin’s gray-blue color scheme must have been obvious to his postwar audience. While the emotions aroused by the Civil War inspired many decidedly sentimental paintings, it was left to newspaper artists and photographers to capture the horror of war, which ended America’s era of innocence.

Irwin, Ruth and George Cochran Lambdin Weidner. George Cochran Lambdin. Pennsylvania: Brandywine River Museum, 1986.