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Howard Pyle
(American, 1853 - 1911)
The Charge
1904
24 1/8 × 16 1/8 in. (61.3 × 41 cm)
2007.11.26
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Howard P. Brokaw, 2007
Howard Pyle creates a scene of chaos filled with individual narratives in his painting The Charge, an illustration for Robert W. Chambers’s short story “Non-Combatants,” which appeared in Harper’s Monthly in November 1904. The Charge conveys a moment of intense action in a Civil War battle. Pyle creates a wall of Union soldiers that comes forward toward the viewer and overwhelms the Confederate soldiers in the foreground. The story reveals that these fierce Union fighters are actually members of a Union band, technically non-combatants who were called upon to fight in a surprise battle.
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