← Winslow Homer

Crew of U.S. Steamsloop "Colorado," Shipped at Boston, June 1861 (from "Harper's Weekly," Vol. 5, p. 439)

Original title: Crew of U.S. Steamsloop "Colorado," Shipped at Boston, June 1861 (from "Harper's Weekly," Vol. 5, p. 439)

Artist

Winslow Homer

Date

July 13, 1861

Medium

Wood engraving

Dimensions

image: 9 1/4 x 13 3/4 in. (23.5 x 34.9 cm) sheet: 10 13/16 x 16 in. (27.5 x 40.7 cm)

Credit line

Harris Brisbane Dick Fund 1929

kurzbeschreibung

This wood engraving by Winslow Homer from 1861 shows the crew of the US steamship Colorado on board. The print was part of a pictorial report in Harper's Weekly and captures the crew's departure from Boston in June 1861. The work is executed as a wood engraving, with an image area measuring 23.5 x 34.9 cm.

Description

Uniformed men in jackets, trousers, and caps stand on a ship's deck. Some have their arms crossed, while others are distributed in various poses. Behind the group rises the ship's structure with a bridge-like elevation; above it is a cloudy sky with birds flying. The layout feels symmetrical: the men in the foreground, the ship behind them. Graded gray tones of the wood engraving produce a detailed black-and-white rendering.

Context

The wood engraving was made in July 1861, a few weeks after the outbreak of the American Civil War. It was published in Harper's Weekly, a magazine known for its up-to-date reporting. The Colorado, a US Navy steamship, had left Boston in June 1861 to take part in military operations. Homer was working as an illustrator for the paper at the time, focusing on military and maritime subjects.

Impact

The even distribution of the men and their calm postures create an impression of order and discipline. The dense lines of the wood engraving give the image a documentary precision that emphasizes the seriousness of the situation. The rendering remains sober and factual, in keeping with the reportorial visual language of those years.

Technique

As a wood engraving, the print belongs to the relief printing processes: the design is cut into a woodblock, with fine lines and shading created by cuts of varying depth that take up ink during printing. This allowed the image to be reproduced in large numbers for magazines like Harper's Weekly. The image size of 23.5 x 34.9 cm corresponds to the usual format of such illustrations.

AI-generated description text

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain (CC0 1.0)