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Paris as Proving Ground: Part I
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Introduction
Picturing Paris
Artists in Paris
Reading Room
At Home in Paris
Paris as Proving Ground: Part I
Paris as Proving Ground: Part II
Summers in the Country
Summers in the Country: Giverny
Back in the United States
Paris as Proving Ground: Part I
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Winslow Homer (1836–1910)

Prisoners from the Front, 1866

Oil on canvas; 24 x 38 in. (61 x 96.5 cm)

Exposition Universelle, 1867

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Gift of Mrs. Frank B. Porter, 1922 (22.207)
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This Civil War scene refers to Brigadier-General Francis Channing Barlow's capture of Confederate prisoners at the Battle of Petersburg in June 1864 and symbolizes the rift between North and South through physical distance and contrasting postures. Although Homer never studied in Paris, he measured his achievement by Parisian standards by showing the canvas at the 1867 Exposition Universelle. A French critic praised it for demonstrating "firm, precise painting, in the manner of Gérôme, but with less dryness."
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