Enlistment of Sickles' Brigade, New York (from Confederate War Etchings)
1861–63
Medium
Etching
Dimensions
Image: 4 3/4 x 7 13/16 in. (12 x 19.8 cm) Sheet: 7 15/16 x 10 3/8 in. (20.1 x 26.4 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1938
Accession Number
38.13.6
Tags
Art Historical Context
**Enlistment of Sickles' Brigade, New York** is a poignant etching by Adalbert John Volck, part of his clandestine series *Confederate War Etchings* created between 1861 and 1863 amid the American Civil War. Volck, a Bavarian-born dentist living in Baltimore—a border city teeming with divided loyalties—produced these works as pro-Southern propaganda. Secretly printed under pseudonyms to evade Union authorities, the series captured Southern perspectives on the conflict through sharp, satirical imagery, making it a rare artifact of Confederate sentiment from Northern soil. This small etching (i...
About the Artist
Adalbert John Volck · 1828–1912
Adalbert John Volck (1828–1912) led one of the more remarkable double lives in American art history. Born in Augsburg, Bavaria, he emigrated to the United States as a young man, eventually settling in Baltimore, where he built a distinguished career as a dentist. Yet beneath his professional respectability lay a fierce artistic talent and a passionate political identity that would find explosive e...