Brigadier General Gustavus A. DeRussy and Staff on Steps of Arlington House, Arlington, Virginia

Alexander Gardner American, Scottish

Not on view

Gardner was an expert in the new wet-collodion-on-glass-plate photographic process and was manager of Mathew B. Brady's Washington, D.C., portrait studio. He split with Brady in November 1862 and formed his own company, taking with him many of Brady's best photographers. Gardner and his corps, like Brady's, produced a vast photographic documentation of the Civil War.

Here, Union soldiers pose for the camera in deliberately casual attitudes on the front steps of the Confederate commander Robert E. Lee's mansion, which was confiscated by the government in 1861. Laying blame-literally at Lee's doorstep-for the vast suffering of the Civil War, the Union Army in 1864 began to bury its dead on Lee's property in what later became Arlington National Cemetery.

Brigadier General Gustavus A. DeRussy and Staff on Steps of Arlington House, Arlington, Virginia, Alexander Gardner (American, Glasgow, Scotland 1821–1882 Washington, D.C.), Albumen silver print from glass negative

Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.

Open Access

As part of the Met's Open Access policy, you can freely copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes.

API

Public domain data for this object can also be accessed using the Met's Open Access API.