In this new exhibit, discover how celebrated American artist Winslow Homer’s work for the illustrated periodical Harper’s Weekly helped shape his later career as a painter and watercolorist.

During the Civil War (1861–1865), American artist Winslow Homer (1836–1910) served as a correspondent for Harper’s. His sketches of soldiers, both in battle on the front lines and in quieter moments back at camp, were reproduced to accompany the journal’s accounts of the conflict. Homer worked for Harper’s just as new technologies were making it possible to rapidly reproduce newsworthy images on a large scale. Working together with Harper’s editors and engravers, he employed a range of pictorial strategies to reassure skeptical readers that his illustrations were not fabrications, but eyewitness observations "drawn on the spot."

Learn more about Exhibition: Winslow Homer: Eyewitness.