Overview
In his book Near Andersonville: Winslow Homer's Civil War, Peter H. Wood offers an in-depth exploration of Winslow Homer's painting "Near Andersonville" (1866). In this illustrated lecture at Emory University, Wood relates the history of this once-lost painting and Homer's relationship to the Civil War. His close reading relates the iconography of “Near Andersonville” to major military and political events of the Civil War and the 1864 presidential election.
Presentation
Part 2: Wood details the history of Winslow’s painting, “Near Andersonville.”
Part 3: Wood explains Homer’s possible motivations for painting “Near Andersonville
Part 4: Examining soldiers in the painting, Wood offers a brief history of Andersonville Prison and the Battle of Petersburg
Part 5: Wood suggests theories for the diverging sets of planks in the lower portion of Homer’s painting
Part 6: Wood ponders several features in the painting: gourds, the building, the woman’s clothes and her mixed race lineage
About
Peter H. Wood is an emeritus professor of American history at Duke University. A former Rhodes scholar and Guggenheim Fellow, he is the author of several books on early American slavery, including Black Majority, published by Knopf in 1974, and Strange New Land, published by Oxford University Press in 2003. Near Andersonville: Winslow Homer's Civil War (Harvard University Press, 2010) is his third book on black images in the work of Winslow Homer. Professor Wood's Emory lecture was presented on February 22, 2011.
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Recommended Resources
Cikovsky, Nicolai Jr., and Franklin Kelly. Winslow Homer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.
Evans, David. Sherman's Horsemen: Union Cavalry Operations in the Atlanta Campaign. Bloomington: Indiana Univesity Press, 1996.
Griffin, Randall C. Winslow Homer: An American Vision. London: Phaidon Press, 2006.
Long, David E. The Jewel of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln's Re-election and the End of Slavery. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994.
Marvel, William. Andersonville: The Last Depot. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
Rose, Willie Lee. Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment. Athens: University Press of Georgia, 1999.
Wood, Peter H. Near Andersonville: Winslow Homer's Civil War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.
——. Weathering the Storm: Inside Winslow Homer's "Gulf Stream." Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004.
—— and Karen C.C. Dalton. Winslow Homer's Images of Blacks: The Civil War and Reconstruction Years. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988.
Links
"Camp Sumter/Andersonville Prison." Andersonville National Historic Site. National Park Service. http://www.nps.gov/ande/historyculture/camp_sumter.htm.
"Introduction." Winslow Homer in the National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art. http://www.nga.gov/feature/homer/homerintro.htm.
"The Civil War and Its Aftermath. 1860-1900." American Art—Picturing America. Newark Museum. http://www.newarkmuseum.org/popup_page.aspx?id=4890.