[Disabled Union Soldiers Posed in Aid of the U.S. Sanitary Commission at the New York Metropolitan Fair]

Photography Studio J. Gurney & Son
April 1864
Not on view
Organized in June 1861 and conceived and managed primarily by female volunteers, the privately funded United States Sanitary Commission helped soldiers with back pay and other logistical needs related to their convalescence. It raised money and distributed supplies to battlefield and camp hospitals through donations and hosting sanitary fairs that charged admission to the public. The April 1864 New York Metropolitan Fair raised more than $178,000. It featured a presentation of recently captured Confederate weapons and a “Picture Gallery” that included loans of paintings and sculptures from the city’s finest collections as well as works commissioned from Albert Bierstadt, Asher B. Durand, and John F. Kensett, among the most important artists of the era.
Some visitors chose to support the patriotic cause in an even more direct way by purchasing carte-de-visite portraits of wounded soldiers who posed during the fair as part of a living tableau. The three Union soldiers here were survivor-representatives of “the blank horror and reality of war, in opposition to its pageantry,” as Gardner observed of the corpses in O’Sullivan’s photograph A Harvest of Death. The blind man, William R. Mudge, Second Massachusetts Infantry, was shot through the head and lost both eyes at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia, on May 3, 1863. In Lynn, Massachusetts, before the war, he had been a photographer.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: [Disabled Union Soldiers Posed in Aid of the U.S. Sanitary Commission at the New York Metropolitan Fair]
  • Photography Studio: J. Gurney & Son (Active 1860–1874)
  • Date: April 1864
  • Medium: Albumen silver print from glass negative
  • Dimensions: Image: 3 1/2 × 2 3/16 in. (8.9 × 5.6 cm)
    Sheet: 3 1/2 × 2 3/16 in. (8.9 × 5.6 cm)
    Mount: 4 in. × 2 1/2 in. (10.2 × 6.3 cm)
    Group frame: either 14 x 11 in. or 17 x 14 in.
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Purchase, Vital Projects Fund Inc. Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2019
  • Object Number: 2019.528
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

More Artwork

Research Resources

The Met provides unparalleled resources for research and welcomes an international community of students and scholars. The Met's Open Access API is where creators and researchers can connect to the The Met collection. Open Access data and public domain images are available for unrestricted commercial and noncommercial use without permission or fee.

To request images under copyright and other restrictions, please use this Image Request form.

Feedback

We continue to research and examine historical and cultural context for objects in The Met collection. If you have comments or questions about this object record, please complete and submit this form. The Museum looks forward to receiving your comments.