In Front of Yorktown is an oil painting completed in 1863 by the American artist Winslow Homer. It depicts men from McClellan's Army of the Potomac, before the Siege of Yorktown during the American Civil War. The painting is in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery. [1]
Winslow Homer began his career as an artist reporter with Harper's Weekly in 1861. [2] [3] Homer first rose to prominence with this publication during the Civil War and was known for his factual approach to his subject matter. His work gave the impression of simply observing what soldiers were doing, at rest in camp, on the move, or in combat. [3] Some of his early works were just drawings but in 1863 he began to develop fully-realized studio paintings.
This work was one of the first paintings that Homer completed in his career. It captures soldiers stationed in Yorktown. The men portrayed in the work were soldiers and leaders of General McClellan's Army. Homer depicts the moment before they embarked on the First Peninsular Campaign in the American Civil War. [1] McClellan was tasked with recruiting soldiers and leading his army into battle. The campaign would result in a defeat for the Union army, something Homer knew by the time he painted this piece. [4]
The art historian Helen Cooper classifies the work as a landscape painting with some elements of "journalistic realism." [4] Scholars have noted Homer's decision to portray a night scene reveals his ambitions as a painter. Art historian Marc Simpson notes that night scenes are technically challenging subjects, and such a work was an impressive achievement for Homer very early in his career. [1]
Much of Civil War art focuses on soldiers fighting on the frontlines. This painting, however, is distinctive for capturing soldiers gathered at a camp, seemingly regrouping. [3] As the art historians Lucretia Hoover Giese and Roy Perkinson note, in this painting "soldiers instead wait, seated huddled together or alone, bivouacked in front of a lean-to, trying to sleep or staring at a fire, whose flames and sparks light up the darkness." [3]
Some scholars regard the painting as a meditation on the uncertainty of war. Peter Carmichael notes how Homer explores this theme by distinguishing between the experiences of officers and soldiers, who appear on opposite sides of the canvas. [5] In the painting, only one person's facial expression can be made out in the painting – one of the officers. As Carmichael writes: "The officer is clearly preoccupied, but what thoughts engage him? Is he lost in a nostalgic dream for home? Or is he looking at the two other soldiers, whose clean uniforms suggest their newness to war? Maybe he feels the weight of an uncertain future with men that he will lead to the front." [5]
Another interpretation emphasizes the loneliness and emptiness of war. Many art historians note that waiting and misery are key themes of the piece. The soldiers' expressionless faces convey a sense of anxiety and extreme fatigue as they sit alone waiting for the next phase of the journey. [4]
George Brinton McClellan was an American military officer, politician, engineer, businessman and writer who served as the 24th governor of New Jersey. A West Point graduate, McClellan served with distinction during the Mexican–American War before leaving the United States Army to serve as a railway executive and engineer until the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. Early in the conflict, McClellan was appointed to the rank of major general and played an important role in raising the Army of the Potomac, which served in the Eastern Theater; he also served as Commanding General of the United States Army from November 1861 to March 1862.
The siege of Yorktown, also known as the Battle of Yorktown and the surrender at Yorktown, began September 28, 1781, and ended on October 19, 1781, at exactly 10:30 am in Yorktown, Virginia. It was a decisive victory by a combined force of the American Continental Army troops led by General George Washington with support from Marquis de Lafayette and French Army troops led by Comte de Rochambeau and a French naval force commanded by Comte de Grasse over the British Army commanded by British Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis.
The Battle of Yorktown or siege of Yorktown was fought from April 5 to May 4, 1862, as part of the Peninsula Campaign of the American Civil War. Marching from Fort Monroe, Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac encountered Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder's small Confederate force at Yorktown behind the Warwick Line. McClellan suspended his march up the Peninsula toward Richmond and settled in for siege operations.
The Peninsula campaign of the American Civil War was a major Union operation launched in southeastern Virginia from March to July 1862, the first large-scale offensive in the Eastern Theater. The operation, commanded by Major General George B. McClellan, was an amphibious turning movement against the Confederate States Army in Northern Virginia, intended to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond. McClellan was initially successful against the equally cautious General Joseph E. Johnston, but the emergence of the more aggressive General Robert E. Lee turned the subsequent Seven Days Battles into a humiliating Union defeat.
Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and illustrator, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters of 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in American art in general.
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The Battle of Shepherdstown, also known as the Battle of Boteler's Ford, took place September 19–20, 1862, at Boteler's Ford along the Potomac River, during the Maryland campaign of the American Civil War. After the Battle of Antietam on September 17, General Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia withdrew across the Potomac. Lee left a rear guard commanded by Brigadier General William N. Pendleton at Boteler's Ford. On September 19, elements of the Union V Corps dueled with Pendleton's artillery before pushing a short distance across the river at dusk. Pendleton inaccurately informed Lee that all of the artillery of the rear guard had been captured. On the morning of September 20, the Confederates counterattacked with A. P. Hill's Light Division, forcing the Union units back across the Potomac. One Union unit, the 118th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, did not withdraw at the same time as the others and suffered heavy losses. Lee's army continued its retreat into the Shenandoah Valley after the battle.
Charles Pomeroy Stone was a career United States Army officer, civil engineer, and surveyor. He fought with distinction in the Mexican–American War, earning two brevet promotions for his performance in the conflict. After resigning and surveying for the Mexican Government, he returned to the U.S. Army to fight in the American Civil War.
John Bankhead Magruder was an American and Confederate military officer. A graduate of West Point, Magruder served with distinction during the Mexican–American War (1846–1848) and was a prominent Confederate Army general during the American Civil War (1861–1865). As a major general, he received recognition for delaying the advance of Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan's large force, the Army of the Potomac, during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign, as well as recapturing Galveston, Texas the following year.
The eastern theater of the American Civil War consisted of the major military and naval operations in the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and the coastal fortifications and seaports of North Carolina.
The Gulf Stream is an 1899 oil painting by Winslow Homer. It shows a man in a small dismasted rudderless fishing boat struggling against the waves of the sea, and was the artist's statement on a theme that had interested him for more than a decade. Homer vacationed often in Florida, Cuba, and the Caribbean.
The 22nd Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry was an infantry regiment in the Union army during the American Civil War. The 22nd Massachusetts was organized by Senator Henry Wilson and was therefore known as "Henry Wilson's Regiment." It was formed in Boston, Massachusetts, and established on September 28, 1861, for a term of three years.
Hugh Charles McBarron Jr. (1902–1992) was an American commercial artist. Known for his wide body of work featuring the United States Armed Forces, he is considered by many to have been the "dean of military illustrators."
Jesse Augustus Gove was an American soldier and lawyer, noteworthy for his military career and his role as a colonel in the American Civil War. After graduating from the American Literary Scientific and Military Academy at Norwich, Vermont, Gove served in the Mexican–American War. After the war, he left the army and became a lawyer in New Hampshire, then returned to army service in 1855. During the Civil War he was colonel of the 22nd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry and was killed leading that regiment in the Battle of Gaines' Mill.
A Visit from the Old Mistress is an 1876 painting by the prominent 19th-century American artist Winslow Homer. It was one of several works that Homer is thought to have created during a mid-1870s visit to Virginia, where he had served for a time as a Union war correspondent during the Civil War. Scholars have noted that the painting's composition is taken from Homer's earlier painting Prisoners from the Front, which depicts a group of captive Confederate soldiers defiantly regarding a Union officer. Put on display in the northern states for a northern audience, A Visit from the Old Mistress, along with Homer's other paintings of black southern life from the Reconstruction era, has been praised as an "invaluable record of an important segment of life in Virginia during the Reconstruction."
The Bright Side is an oil painting by the American artist Winslow Homer. Painted in 1865, the concluding year of the American Civil War, the work depicts four African American Union Army teamsters sitting on the sunny side of a Sibley tent. The painting is in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco-(De Young)
Northeaster is one of several paintings on marine subjects by the late-19th-century American painter Winslow Homer. Like The Fog Warning and Breezing Up, he created it during his time in Maine. It is on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Viewers are presented a struggle of elements between the sea and the rocky shore. Winslow Homer excelled in painting landscape paintings that depicted seascapes and mountain scenery.
The Battle of Malvern Hill, also known as the Battle of Poindexter's Farm, was fought on July 1, 1862, between the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, led by Gen. Robert E. Lee, and the Union Army of the Potomac under Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan. It was the final battle of the Seven Days Battles during the American Civil War, taking place on a 130-foot (40 m) elevation of land known as Malvern Hill, near the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia and just one mile (1.6 km) from the James River. Including inactive reserves, more than fifty thousand soldiers from each side took part, using more than two hundred pieces of artillery and three warships.
Prisoners from the Front is an 1866 painting by American artist Winslow Homer. One of Homer's most notable early works, the painting depicts a scene in which Confederate officers surrender to Union Brigadier General Francis Channing Barlow during the American Civil War. Homer's experience as a war correspondent likely contributed to his rendering of the work.
The Veteran in a New Field is an oil-on-canvas painting by the 19th-century American artist Winslow Homer. It is set in the aftermath of the American Civil War and is often interpreted as an emblem of postwar American society. The painting depicts a farmer harvesting wheat in a field with a scythe. The farmer in the painting is identified as a former Union Soldier from his discarded jacket and canteen in the right foreground of the painting. This painting was one of several that Homer did on the American Civil War, including his previous works Home, Sweet Home and Prisoners from the Front. The Veteran in a New Field is a transitional painting in Homer's body of work. It comments on the postwar return of soldiers to daily life and the history of death that they bring along with them. It uses biblical themes to comment on war and nature, while also alluding to stories from classical history.