American artist Larry Rivers was an early Pop artist whose blended tenets of Abstract Expressionism and Figurative imagery. "This Last Civil War Veteran" was done from a photograph that appeared in Life magazine of the vet in his coffin with a Marine guard. When it appeared, Ray Parker, the artist, sent it to me with a note reading 'Go!' He wanted me to do something with it, make a painting of it. He knew that somehow this had become a subject of mine." -excerpted from the book Larry Rivers by Sam Humter
