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Barbara Weinberg: Hello. I’m Barbara Weinberg, curator—with my colleague Carrie Rebora Barratt—of the exhibition “American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The exhibition includes more than a hundred iconic paintings by many of America’s most acclaimed artists, who tell stories about their own times by depicting ordinary people engaged in life’s tasks and pleasures. The paintings range in date from the era of the Revolution to the eve of World War I. The painter who made the most compelling chronicle of the Civil War and the period of reconciliation that followed it is Winslow Homer. We invited James McPherson—Professor Emeritus of American history at Princeton University and distinguished Civil War scholar—to comment on two of Homer’s great paintings: Pitching Quoits of 1865, on loan to the exhibition from the Harvard University Art Museums, and The Veteran in a New Field, also of 1865, from the Met’s own collection. Pitching Quoits is Homer’s most ambitious Civil War scene. While photographers documented the war’s carnage and other painters depicted its battles, Homer primarily chronicled life in camp. In this painting, we see Union soldiers who chose to outfit |
