The Addison Gallery is fortunate to own works of art that document the Civil War. Fought between 1861 and 1865 at the immense cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, and certainly among the most cathartic and consequential event in American history, the Civil War continues to engage artists. Among them is Kara Walker, whose portfolio of lithograph-screenprints is part of the concurrent exhibition Kara Walker: Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated). Recently received as a gift, this portfolio draws from Harper's Weekly, a political magazine based in New York and published from 1857 until 1916. During the Civil War, the magazine featured in-depth stories and illustrations showing in print how the action was unfolding in readers' backyards. In conjunction with the installation of Kara Walker's prints, this exhibition includes some of the best illustrations that appeared in Harper's at that time.

Acting as war correspondents, the young artists Winslow Homer and Thomas Nast, among others, conveyed the daily developments from the battlefront. Their drawings, many done on the spot, were translated into wood engravings and reproduced for Harper's mass audiences. While such images, ranging from a sharpshooter aiming his gun to cavalries charging their enemies during combat,

Winslow Homer (1836 - 1910)
The Army of the Potomac - A Sharp-Shooter on Picket Duty, 1862
wood engraving on wove paper 1990.6
purchased as the gift of Warren P. Snyder (PA 1936)
Addison Gallery of American Art

suggest the realities of war, the intensity and bloodshed of the gruesome battles are absent. Conversely, the documentary photographs by Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner are firsthand impressions, revealing the deep wounds of this monumental struggle that memorialize and justify the war effort. Similar in format where text meets image, both Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War and Harper's Weekly express a firm pro-Union stance on the Civil War. From the Front Line offers a miniature window into the distant past from the perspective of the most observant and talented artists of the era.