[Tent Wards, Harewood Hospital, Near Washington, D.C.]

Art Historical Context

This poignant albumen silver print, titled *Tent Wards, Harewood Hospital, Near Washington, D.C.*, captures the makeshift medical facilities that defined Union Army care during the American Civil War (1861–65). Attributed to Mathew B. Brady or his studio team, the image from around 1862–65 shows rows of tent wards at Harewood Hospital, a sprawling complex just outside the capital that treated thousands of wounded soldiers. These canvas enclosures, visible in crisp detail, highlight the era's rudimentary field hospitals, where surgeons battled infection and overcrowding amid the war's relentles...

About the Artist

Mathew B. Brady|Unknown · 1823–1896

Mathew B. Brady (c. 1823–1896) was an American photographer who became the most famous photographer of the Civil War era and one of the founding figures of American photographic history. Born in Warren County, New York, to Irish immigrant parents, he learned the daguerreotype process from Samuel F.B. Morse and William Page and opened his first portrait studio in New York City in 1844. Brady quick...