Rebel Dead Behind Stone Wall, Fredericksburgh
May 3, 1863
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions
Image: 9 5/8 × 11 15/16 in. (24.4 × 30.4 cm) Sheet: 9 5/8 × 11 15/16 in. (24.4 × 30.4 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
2019.490
Tags
Art Historical Context
Captured on May 3, 1863, during the aftermath of intense fighting in the Chancellorsville campaign near Fredericksburg, Virginia, *Rebel Dead Behind Stone, Fredericksburgh* a stark albumen silver print by Andrew Joseph Russell, a pioneering Union Army photographer. Russell, who documented key Civil War sites with remarkable precision, immortalized the grim reality of the stone wall—a notorious Confederate defensive position from the earlier Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862, where thousands fell. This image poignantly conveys the war's human cost, showing fallen Rebel soldiers amid the...
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...