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The History Press

Art During Wartime: Painting Everyday Life in the Civil War North

Art During Wartime: Painting Everyday Life in the Civil War North

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While the Civil War raged on, many northern artists depicted everyday life rather than grand battles or landscapes of noble sacrifice. Amidst a conflict that was upending antebellum social norms, these artists created realistic scenes of mundane events, known as genre paintings. While many of the paintings seem merely to show everyday incidents, Vanessa Meikle Schulman argues that artists connected the visuals to larger concerns.

With attention to how the war shaped new definitions of gender, race, and disability, Art during Wartime uncovers the complexity of these genre paintings. Schulman uses seven case studies of prominent and lesser-known artists who explored how the war instigated social change and shaped northern opinions about current events, including George Cochran Lambdin, Vincent Colyer, and Eastman Johnson. Utilizing detailed visual analysis and extensive historical research, Art during Wartime reframes our narrative of Civil War visual culture, placing genre painting in a central ideological role.

About the Author

Vanessa Meikle Schulman is associate professor of history and art history at George Mason University. Prof. Schulman has lectured at the Lee-Fendall House.


Pages 312
Publisher The University of Massachusetts Press
Year 2024
ISBN 978-1-62534-801-2
Format Paperback


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