View of Mount Vernon and North Colonnade, 1861

Status

Not on view

Label Text

Winslow Homer was a war correspondent for Harper’s Weekly when he made this sketch in October 1861. The artist visited Mount Vernon while on his way to the Army of the Potomac, the daily life of which he would illustrate for the popular magazine.

Date1861

Artist Winslow Homer (American, 1836 - 1910)

Geography Made - United States

Medium/TechniqueWatercolor and pencil on paper

DimensionsOverall (Image H x W x D): 5 3/8 in. × 8 5/8 in. (13.65 cm × 21.91 cm)

Credit LinePurchase, 1956 Conservation courtesy of The Founders, Washington Committee Endowment Fund

Object numberEV-328

DescriptionThis work on paper is an image of the north side of the Mount Vernon mansion, showing the side of the piazza, the cellar entrance, the Venetian window, the colonnade, and the edge of the servant's hall. Two figures with red coats, one standing and one seated, appear at the door of the cellar.
SignedOn the lower right corner of the image: “Homer 1861”.
Published ReferencesPeter H. Wood, Near Andersonville: Winslow Homer's Civil War, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 35-36.

Barbara S. Groseclose, Nineteenth-Century American Art, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 187.

Peter H. Wood and Karen C. C. Dalton, Winslow Homer's Images of Blacks: The Civil War and Reconstruction Years, (Houston: The Menil Collection, 1988).

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