Life in Camp, Part 2: The Girl He Left Behind
Medium
Color lithograph
Dimensions
Sheet: 4 1/8 x 2 3/8 in. (10.4 x 6.1 cm)
Classification
Prints|Ephemera
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Jefferson Burdick Collection, Gift of Jefferson Burdick, 1947
Accession Number
47.91.25(195)
Tags
Art Historical Context
Created during the height of the American Civil War, *Life in Camp, Part 2: The Girl He Left Behind* (1864) captures the emotional toll of separation on soldiers and their loved ones. Winslow Homer, then a young illustrator, contributed designs to this series of small color lithographs published by Louis Prang & Co. and Beadle & Co. The diminutive sheet—just over four by two inches—depicts a young woman, likely the sweetheart or wife of a Union soldier, embodying the home-front experience that millions of Americans faced as loved ones marched off to battle. Printed as affordable ephemera, the...
About the Artist
Winslow Homer|Louis Prang & Co.|Beadle & Co. · 1836–1910
Winslow Homer (1836-1910) was one of America's greatest painters and a preeminent figure in 19th-century American art. Largely self-taught, Homer began his career as a commercial illustrator and Civil War correspondent for Harper's Weekly before becoming renowned for his powerful marine subjects and landscape paintings. His mastery of both oil and watercolor, combined with his uncompromising reali...