Civil War Battle

American 19th Century

National Gallery of Art

A battle scene set on a grassy field is painted with vivid, saturated tones of green, bright blue, brown, pearl white, and shades of gray and blue in this nearly square composition. The men closest to us wear uniforms of black jackets, dark blue pants, and flat-topped, brimmed caps. At the center, a man flails backward on a rearing chestnut-brown horse. A uniformed man with a goatee and wearing a high-crowned hat with a gray feather holds the reins of the rearing horse, as a white horse shies just beyond his shoulder. Another brown horse lies on the ground, tongue out, with a man draped over its saddle nearby. In the near distance, two men help an injured solider. Closer to us, a man reaches for some bushes and another lies on the ground, one arm raised. A screen of white smoke obscures the view beyond the rearing horse, and a black form at the center of orange and red streaks could represent an explosive. Another soldier on a brown horse raises one hand just to the right of the others, and three lines of troops press forward to the right following an American flag with seventeen visible stars and the thirteen red and white stripes held aloft by a bearer in the front row. Two men lie dead on the ground here, and another man is carried away on a stretcher. More troops stand in rows or man cannons in the background. A line of soldiers wearing brown and a mounted officer wearing a gray uniform advance from the left in the background. These troops hold flags with two red stripes flanking a single white stripe, and blue fields with seven stars. White clouds kick up in the blue sky above. The scene is painted simply in an almost cartoonish style.