New Orleans is a city of contradictions.

At one time it was the most racially liberal city in the south. Then, after the Civil War, the tide turned. Post-Reconstruction the Confederacy was re-glorified with a vengeance. This meant statues. TONS of statues, and of course one of Robert E. Lee. It’s atop a doric column at Lee Circle, near downtown, and recently I was eye-level with General Lee, so I snapped a picture. Here’s my interpretation of that shot, rendered in pen, ink and watercolor:

I took the photo at an event on the rooftop of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. There was a fine little cocktail party up there, and the sun was setting gently, the sky behind the general peacefully aglow. Lee stands like he won the war, one foot perched audaciously over the edge of his platform. Modernity is audacious, too. It intrudes on this stately scene in the form of the streetlight to the right.

Lee Circle from an actual old postcard: