Nine months before the the start of the Civil War, painter Frederick Church released his painting “Twilight in the Wilderness” to great fanfare in New York City. At a time before modern entertainment, the premiere of this five-foot wide painting was a major media event. Ever since, historians have looked to it as a portent of events that were to come. According to the Cleveland Museum of Art, "the painting's subject can be perceived as symbolically evoking the coming conflagration; indeed, one scholar has memorably described the painting as a 'natural apocalypse. ' " Image courtesy of The Cleveland Museum of Art.