Frederic Edwin Church, Cotopaxi, 1862, oil on canvas, Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund, Gibbs-Williams Fund, Dexter M. Ferry Jr. Fund, Merrill Fund, Beatrice W. Rogers Fund, and Richard A. Manoogian Fund. The Bridgeman Art Library. All images courtesy Smithsonian American Art Museum. All rights reserved.
A new exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, "The Civil War and American Art," examines how America's artists represented the impact of the Civil War and its aftermath.
Genre and landscape painting captured the transformative impact of the war, not traditional history painting. "This exhibition shows how our artists responded in the moment to a great national crisis and how it changed our ambition for America's civilization, reinventing the Founders' ideals for a new age," says Eleanor Jones Harvey, Senior Curator.
Timothy H. O'Sullivan, A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, July 1863, albumen print, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., Museum purchase and partial gift of Carol L. Kaufman and Stephen C. Lampl in memory of their parents Helen and Carl Lampl.
The exhibition includes battlefield photography. The new medium was used as an art form to interpret and document events.
On view through April 28, 2013. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Eighth and F Streets, N.W., Washington, DC
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