"THESE ARE THE TIMES THAT TRY MENS SOULS." So wrote Thomas Paine, in words of desperation, written in the darkest hours of our struggle for liberty.
This magnificent painting, "The Prayer at Valley Forge", clearly demonstrates why Arnold Friberg has achieved fame as the greatest living interpreter of historical, Biblical, and western subjects. Combining rare artistic skill with a profound respect for the most minute historical details, he has imbued his painting with a dynamic realism "unsurpassed by any contemporary inspirational artist". Filled with rich color, strengthened with superb draughtsman ship and historical accuracy, his paintings convey a living realism, a grandeur, and a spiritual force of a particularly masculine kind.
The picture you see here was painted to recall that winter of 1777-78, at the lowest, most hopeless and discouraging time in our revolutionary war. For the struggling Americans had been defeated by the mighty British army in battle after battle, and were fast losing all hope. It was at such a time that General Washington humbly beseeched his God for the strength and the resolution to endure.
But Friberg's real power derives from the dedication of his talent to a cause greater than the artist. His art is made to serve. "The Prayer at Valley Forge" was painted to serve the cause of liberty, to remind Americans of the deep spiritual roots of our beloved country, to recall a place of cold, and pain and sacrifice, to pay tribute to the tall and lonely man who alone held the struggling nation together, General Washington, driven to his knees there in the bitter snows of Valley Forge.
