The Watchers,
Arlington National Cemetery
Robert Winter, 2003 

Acrylic on Stretched Canvas
24" x 30"

Giclee Print:   $550
On Sheet Canvas, Unframed

Framed Original:   Not currently for sale

Artist's Notes

Arlington National Cemetery is a profoundly peaceful place—much more so than the tourists clambering off the bus to see the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns will have a chance to ever realize.

They’re missing a lot even in what they see of that ceremony. As a piece of pageantry to be performed before large crowds, the changing of the guard doesn’t amount to all that  much.  When the ritual becomes impressive is when all the crowds are gone—when there’s nobody around but maybe a gardener or two raking leaves.  When you see all the care the sentries put into their precision drills at times like that, you become much more aware of the profound respect they’re showing to whoever is inside that marble box.

This scene is a view from the cemetery of official Washington on a perfect afternoon in autumn—the season of harvests.

When you gaze at it for a moment, do you begin to get a sense you might not be the only one looking?

That sense hit me very strongly.  I couldn’t shake a feeling that the men buried here were watching the city across the Potomac.   (Possibly it’s a result of the rounded tops of the gravestones being arranged like theater seats.)

The sense of official Washington being watched by its fallen heroes took on a special poignancy in the context of the day I first came upon this scene, because the Watergate hearings were going on. 

I could only imagine how the quiet and little-known heroes resting here would react to all the sordid dealings by the famous and powerful that were making their way across each day’s headlines.  How would they feel, watching all these things being done to what they died for?

It’s a viewpoint I think we should all stop and consider more often.  It’s as relevant to the political storms of the present and future as it was to Watergate.

© COPYRIGHT 2003 ROBERT WINTER.  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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