Born in 1836, the year of the Texas Revolution, Henry McArdle made it his life's work to paint the historic events of Texas history. Today, his enormous battle paintings Dawn at the Alamo and The Battle of San Jacinto hang in the Texas Senate chamber, impressing generations of visitors with their sweep and incredible detail.
In 1929, the Texas State Library acquired the exhaustive research done by Mr. McArdle over a period of 40 years, from the 1870s to the early 1900s. The artist's papers took a singular form. McArdle's son had compiled the research and had it bound into two huge leather volumes, one for each painting. Officially entitled, "McArdle Companion Battle Paintings," they became known simply as the "McArdle Notebooks."
The latest on-line exhibit at the Texas State Library and Archives makes these now-fragile rarities available for scholars and the general public alike. The notebooks are presented in their entirety, fully navigable so users can explore the notebooks much as if they were sitting down with the actual volumes.
"The McArdle Notebooks presented some challenges for digitization," says Liz Clare, digital imaging specialist for ARIS. "The beautiful leather bindings have deteriorated significantly over time, and now the sheer weight of the volumes threatens to tear them apart when handled. Plus, some of the papers inside are now well over a hundred years old and very brittle. We used a book scanner that supports the weight of the open book while taking the scan from above. This enabled us to get legible scans of most of the pages while not putting the notebooks at risk."
ARIS director Chris LaPlante is also pleased with the exhibit, saying, "The paintings, and these notebooks, are absolutely unique and extremely historically significant. This was a man who worked when many of the survivors and veterans of these events were still living. McArdle even corresponded with Santa Anna. We're very pleased to make the notebooks available on-line to students of history and art alike."
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