Prisoners from the Front
Winslow Homer American
Painted in his New York studio after the war, this work was inspired by the heroism of Homer’s friend Francis Channing Barlow, a Union Army general who captured a division of Confederate soldiers at Spotsylvania, Virginia, in 1864. The artist summarized their confrontation against a ruined Southern landscape, while also implying class differences between the elegant officer in his sharp uniform and the disheveled Confederate troops. In 1869 critic Eugene Benson suggested that the painting transcended a specific event to portray the entirety of the war, noting that the prisoners represented "the elements in our Southern society that fomented and fed the rebellion against a beneficent and unaggressive Government."
#4362. Prisoners from the Front
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