The endless public school exercises of cramming my head full of names of battles and dates and generals did nothing to fire my imagination and even less to help me understand the dynamics of pivotal moments of an era. 

In college, on my first day in my Western Art History class, I sat glassy eyed and fidgety, watching endless slides of cathedrals. Yet, many of my fellow students were transfixed by the projected display that I found so boring. 

At long last, when the slideshow ended, the professor stood before us, scanning our faces.

“How many of you have been to France?” he asked.

To my surprise, about half of the students raised their hands. 

The professor lectured us briefly about the architecture of the cathedrals, then he opened the floor for discussion. Most of the students who participated were among those who had been to Europe. 

Years later, I went to Italy and saw some of the great cathedrals in Florence, Siena, and Milan. Experiencing these living testaments to human endeavor for myself made all the difference. 

Not long after Killing Lincoln by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard hit the bestseller list in 2011, someone loaned me a copy of it. The fate of Abraham Lincoln was certainly familiar territory. Yet there was an emotional element to this book that I had not expected. Reading about the conditions endured during the Civil War, by the soldiers on both sides of the fight, brought me to tears.  Mr. O’Reilly’s lucid descriptions had enabled me to see the humanity common to all of the men dying on the battlefields.

I made a visit to Fort Pulaski near Savannah, Georgia. Seeing the cramped quarters on a hot summer day, I could vividly imagine the soldiers in their soiled woolen uniforms, with hunger in their bellies, surrounded by swarms of mosquitoes and the stench of decay. Maybe those young men were on the wrong side of history, but each of them was part of a family and probably loved.

In the process of writing my first novel, A Moon Garden, I came across an 18th century painting of a young British Army officer. My curiosity about him set me off on an adventure in pursuit of information and inspired me to write another book. After a few years of research, writing, and editing, my latest work of historical fiction, as yet unpublished, is finished. 

The discovery of that portrait has brought me full circle, fueling my desire to know and understand history. It forever changed the way I look at art. A painting hanging on the wall of the Art Institute of Chicago or the National Gallery of London is the legacy of an artist’s life. As important as that may be, each picture also keeps alive the spirit of another person in another time and place. If we don’t ask the questions, we may never unveil the stories they have to tell.

Roxane Gilbert