Artist:
Winslow Homer
(American, 1836 - 1910)
The Army of the Potomac - A Sharp-shooter on Picket Duty
Medium: Wood engraving on paper
Date: 1862
Dimensions:
9 × 13 3/4 in. (22.9 × 34.9 cm)
Accession number: 92.3.2
Curatorial RemarksPublished in Harper's Weekly, 1860s and 1870s;Even when "Special Artist" correspondents worked at some distance from battle, they were routinely exposed to sharpshooters, members of one of the most elite units in the Union Army who could hit a target more than a mile away. This boldly silhouetted image of a sharpshooter taking aim through a telescopic sight is one of Homer's most dramatic and modern images of the Civil War. Homer recalled: "I looked through one of their [sharpshooters'] rifles once when they were in a peach orchard in the front of Yorktown in April 1862 . . . the [impression] struck me as being as near murder as anything I could think of in connection with the army and I always had a horror of that branch of the service."