From June 15 through August 18, 2024, the Civil War Museum Antaramian Gallery will feature a temporary exhibit featuring prints from the collections of the Civil War Museum. Approximately 50 original images printed during the Civil War, including etchings, engravings, lithographs, and chromolithographs will be on display. Shared is an overview of the history and methods of printmaking, with new tools and materials like those used by 19th century printmakers. Subjects include portraits, famous battles, popular prints, illustrations, certificates, commendations, and commemorative documents that show the importance of print publishing during the Civil War.
The Civil War Museum is located at 5400 1st Avenue. Admission to this exhibit is free. The museum is open Mon.-Sat. 10am-5pm, Sun. 12-5pm.; closed holidays.
More details:
Publishers and prints include:
Lithographs by major publishers Currier and Ives, New York, Kurz and Allison, Chicago, Major and Knapp, New York, American Oleograph Company, Milwaukee, and Gibson & Co., Cincinnati—known today as Gibson Greeting Card Company.
Engravings and etchings by Edwin Forbes, Ritchie, and W. Sartain, who chronicled the war in both stylized and naturalistic detail.
Woodblock engravings from newspapers and influential periodicals including Harper’s Weekly, Illustrated London News, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated, and The Daily Advertiser, as well as an 1846 issue of Ladies National Magazine.
Documents on display include the Commission certificate of Union General George Thomas, a Confederate Railroad Bond, proclamations, broadsides, and a Capitol House menu.
Exhibit overview:
During the Civil War, printed images had the power to influence perceptions and popular opinion, equal to today’s visual and digital media. The quick rise of popular media during the Civil War had a powerful and lasting impact on our country. This special exhibit of prints from the collection of the Civil War Museum shows the war as it was seen through the most important media of the time, the printed page.
The Civil War was America’s first illustrated war. At that time, the only view most Americans had of their country—and indeed, the World—came to them through the rapidly growing business of printed media. The war could not be seen from afar by any other means.
Printmaking – Pop Culture of the Civil War gives an overview of the history of the most popular forms of printmaking in the 19th century. Selected prints from the museum collection include popular works by major artists and publishers of the time. New materials displayed alongside original prints from the era show the skill and artistry of these printmakers, and the surprising simplicity of the tools they used to create their art.
During the Civil War, most Americans wanted to understand the events and politics of their times. It was an educated public that wanted objective reporting as well as visual storytelling. Many had never left their own farms, towns, or cities, and struggled to imagine places they had never seen and likely never would. While folks “back home” awaited news of battles and troops, eager to know what was happening far away, those who had gone to war were hungry for news of home and something to pass the time in camp. Publishers responded to the growing demand and captured the war in words and pictures.
Photographers could capture a still scene or portrait in lifelike clarity, but it not the action of battle or scope of the battlefield. Photography was relatively new, and required time, patience, and fragile materials. An artist up to the challenge and risk needed only paper and pencils to sketch any scene. Artists became eye witness reporters of the action of war.
Back in the print shop, sketches from the field were reproduced in full color and black and white. Many printmakers were immigrants from the centers of printmaking in Germany and France. They drew upon old-world academic training, Romantic, Victorian, and photographic sources to visualize and convey this new American experience to the printed page.
Just as today, publishers presented stories and pictures as accurately as they could, or slanted to suit their politics. In the pages of illustrated periodicals, political figures and candidates were fair game for ridicule or promotion, and the victorious earned honor or scorn according to which side they were on. From crude woodcuts to intricate engravings, images were rendered from comic to realist and everything in-between.
The growing market for daily news and information in the 19th century—plus new technologies and innovations in communication, travel, and printing—brought great advances in the production and distribution of printed media. Daily, weekly, and monthly, in towns and cities large and small, miles of paper passed through presses and out to the masses.
Reporters sent news back by telegraph. Artists drew what they saw on the battlefield and in camp and sent it to the printers. Printmakers transferred drawings onto metal and stone to transform them into prints. Printers and pressmen cranked their presses to turn out printed materials of all kinds. Publishers distributed art prints, magazines, and periodicals across the country.
The market for art prints surged, as well. Colorful lithographic battle scenes, memorials, and sentimental prints were sold by the thousands. Americans displayed them proudly in their homes and businesses, hanging framed battle scenes next to famous generals, politicians, and Abraham Lincoln.
Themes and symbols of the American Revolution were especially suited to wartime sentiment, as both sides of the conflict aligned themselves with the founding principles and fathers of the Republic. Letters to-and-from the front were written on patriotic stationery and regimental envelopes. Soldiers and officers were rewarded and memorialized with colorful certificates and commendations decorated with Greco-Roman symbols and mythological figures.
Loved and cherished in their time, these printed materials from the Civil War have an impact now as artworks, artifacts, and as historic records that preserve what people saw, thought, and felt. To view them firsthand is to be transported back to a time when visual expression was often artful and artistic.
Through a selection of prints on paper, this Civil War exhibit gives a glimpse into the rise and impact of popular media in America that can still be felt today.