The Civil War had as profound and lasting an impact on American art as it did on American culture. Both genre painting and landscape painting were fundamentally altered by the war and its aftermath.
In an illustrated lecture, Eleanor Jones Harvey, author of The Civil War and American Art and senior curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, explores the "metaphorical war." Landscape painters, notably Frederic Church and Sanford Gifford, conveyed the mood of the nation as storms rise and volcanos erupt in their paintings, while genre painters Winslow Homer and Eastman Johnson addressed the issue of slavery and asked hard questions about what kind of nation would emerge from the conflict.
World Art History Certificate elective: Earn 1/2 credit*
General Information
*Enrolled participants in the World Art History Certificate Program receive 1/2 elective credit. Not yet enrolled? Learn about the program, its benefits, and how to register here.
