Prisoners from the Front

Realism Abroad

Winslow Homer

Prisoners from the Front

1866

Oil on canvas, 61 × 96.5 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A Union officer faces three captured Confederate soldiers on a stripped battlefield.

  • The Met says it was inspired by the courage of Barlow, a Union general and friend of Homer's.
  • The critic Eugene Benson saw the prisoners as types standing for "the elements in our Southern society that fomented and fed the rebellion."
  • The war is shown through faces and clothes rather than battle.

Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York · Public Domain (Met Open Access)

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