However, as Alexander and Longstreet watched the Confederate guns wheel into position, the fate of the South still remained cloaked by the future. The mighty bombardment and the great assault still lay ahead - and the quest for Southern independence still seemed within the grasp of Lee's legions. Searching for an idea for a painting is always a difficult task and they always come about in different ways. In the case of Forming the Line, I was looking for an artillery subject because I had not done one in a number of years. The one thing that I wanted to avoid was the repetition of a work that had been done by me or by another artist.
Most paintings depict the guns firing because the smoke and flames are so dramatic.
Equally dramatic, I think, is the act of forming the line, when the artillery is rolled in to place, unlimbered and set up. This was especially so on the third day at Gettysburg, when Confederates were preparing for the greatest field artillery barrage in American history at that time. In Forming the Line, we see Colonel Edward Porter Alexander and General James Longstreet overseeing the confederate artillery. Alexander, Longstreet's young chief of artillery, uses binoculars to study the distant enemy line on Cemetery Ridge, while Longstreet waits for the gifted artillerist's observations. Around them is a swirl of activity as the guns are wheeled into place.