[View Across Rappahannock River to Fredericksburg, Virginia]

Art Historical Context

Captured in February 1863, *View Across Rappahann River to Fredericksburg,* is an albumen silver print a glass negative by Andrew Joseph Russell, under the renowned studio of Mathew B. Brady This poignant landscape photograph gazes across the Rappahannock River toward Virginia town, evoking the quiet aftermath of conflict in a war-torn American South. The image holds profound historical significance as a document of the Civil War era, taken just months after the brutal Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862—one of the Union's most devastating defeats, with over 12,000 casualties. Russell, ...

About the Artist

Andrew Joseph Russell|Mathew B. Brady · 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...