Trenches, Petersburg
1864
Alfred Waud was essentially the 19th-century equivalent of a war correspondent, sketching furiously on the front lines of the Civil War. This raw graphite study captures the eerie stillness of the trenches outside Petersburg in 1864, where a rustic farmhouse looms behind a lonely cannon wheel and weary figures. Unlike polished studio masterpieces, these field sketches possess an urgent, scratchy energy because Waud was racing against time to get his drawings back to New York for publication. It feels less like a finished art piece and more like a frozen moment of history, scribbled down before the smoke even cleared.
- Technique
- Graphite sketch
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