[Unidentified Company of Soldiers at Ease, Seated on Ground in Tented Camp]

Art Historical Context

This poignant albumen silver print from glass negative, dating from 1861–65, captures an unidentified company of Union soldiers at ease in a tented camp during the American Civil War.ributed to the studio of Mathew B. Brady, the pioneering photographer whose teams documented the conflict's raw realities, the image shows weary troops seated on the ground amid canvas tents, their relaxed postures offering a rare glimpse of humanity amid hardship. Acquired through the Harris Brisbane Dick Fund the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Photographs Department, it exemplifies 19th-century wet-collodion photo...

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...