Rebel Cassion Destroyed by Federal Shells. At Fredericksburgh, May 3, 1863. Eight Horses Killed.
May 3, 1863
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions
Image: 9 7/16 × 12 15/16 in. (23.9 × 32.8 cm) Sheet: 9 7/16 × 12 15/16 in. (23.9 × 32.8 cm) Mount: 13 7/8 in. × 16 15/16 in. (35.3 × 43 cm)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Purchase, Vital Projects Fund Inc. Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2019
Accession Number
2019.484
Tags
Art Historical Context
Andrew Joseph Russell’s “Rebel Caisson Destroyed by Federal Shells. At Fredericksburgh, May 3, 1863” captures a grim moment from the American Civil War. As one of the conflict’s earliest documentary photographers, Russell traveled with Union forces, using his camera to record the war’s material devastation rather than heroic charges. The image shows the shattered remains of a Confederate artillery wagon and the bodies of eight horses felled by Union artillery during the fighting at Fredericksburg, offering viewers a stark record of industrialized warfare’s toll on both men and animals. The ph...
About the Artist
Andrew Joseph Russell · 1830–1902
Andrew Joseph Russell (1829–1902) was a pioneering American photographer whose work captured the raw drama of the Civil War and the monumental engineering of the transcontinental railroad. Born on March 20, 1829, in Walpole, New Hampshire, to Joseph Russell and Harriet Robinson, he grew up in Nunda, New York, where he developed an early passion for painting, creating portraits, landscapes, and eve...