Pop Art pioneer Larry Rivers helped to dissolve the barriers that traditionally separated fine art and popular culture. This painting was inspired by a 1959 Life magazine article entitled “The Last Survivor of the Civil War.” The accompanying photograph depicted Walter Williams lying in bed, with his gray uniform and large Confederate and Union flags hanging on the wall above.

The flags in this staged scene, once carried by opposing American armies, are here symbolically united. This image would have been particularly powerful during the modern civil rights era, in which the Confederate battle flag became a symbol for Southern anti-integration forces. Both the original photograph and the painting reveal the power of artworks to shape historical interpretations, even when they are contradicted by the facts: US census records reveal that Williams (1854–1959) was a young child at the time he claimed to have enlisted in the Confederate army.