Pencil and ink on board, 9 x 10 in. Initialed lower left by the artist, Allen C. Redwood. After a photograph of a dead Confederate soldier from the 55th Virginia Regiment by Thomas C. Roche. Reproduced in The American Heritage Century Collection of Civil War Art, p. 310, plate 327.  Some very light soiling in margins, few short tears along edges.

At the age of 17, Allen C. Redwood (1844-1922) enlisted in the 55th Regiment of the Army of Northern Virginia, which saw action in several battles including Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. He was wounded in action at Gettysburg and captured twice. Redwood eventually achieved the rank of regimental sergeant major, making him one of the very few sketch artists who fought in combat as an officer. Following the war, he documented his experiences through his illustrations, producing work for Scribner's, Harper's Weekly, and Century Magazine. Redwood was also sent to Cuba to cover the Spanish American War by Harper's Weekly in 1898.

While the photographic process evolved rapidly from its inception in 1839 and the wet plate process of taking photographs was coming into widespread use by the start of the Civil War, it was a cumbersome process in the field as well as the studio. More significantly, at that time the photographs themselves could not be reproduced as illustrations accompanying written reports of the war.

As a result, publishers of newspapers and other periodicals in major cities, primarily in the North, employed a number of sketch artists who traveled with armies to draw the scenes that they witnessed. These sketches, most frequently pencil on paper with brief identifications of people and places, were then sent back by courier to the periodical publishers. The battlefield sketches received by the publishers were then copied by engraving artists onto wooden blocks, which were used in printing presses to illustrate printed articles covering the war.

Unlike the photographers of the day, who were limited to capturing the aftermath of battles, the sketch artists had the advantage of recording what they were witnessing as the events occurred before their eyes.

Provenance: David L. Hack Civil War Art Collection.  [ph:L]

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