The Civil War and American Art

Washington, D.C./New Haven, Connecticut: Smithsonian American Art Museum / Yale University Press, 2012. Softcover. As new in shrinkwrap. Glued binding of stiff color illustrated wraps, xvii, 316 pp, 110 bw illustrations and 103 color illustrations. Issued in conjunction with a 2013 exhibition that "looks at the range of artwork created before, during, and following the war, in the years between 1852 and 1877. Author Eleanor Jones Harvey surveys paintings made by some of America's finest artists, including Frederic Church, Sanford Gifford, Winslow Homer, and Eastman Johnson, and photographs taken by George Barnard, Alexander Gardner, and Timothy H. O'Sullivan. Harvey examines American landscape and genre painting and the new medium of photography to understand both how artists made sense of the war and how they portrayed what was a deeply painful, complex period in American history. Enriched by firsthand accounts of the war by soldiers, former slaves, abolitionists, and statesmen. Harvey's research demonstrates how these artists used painting and photography to reshape American culture. Alongside the artworks, period voices (notably those of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman) amplify the anxiety and dilemmas of wartime America." (dj).