Soldat de l'infanterie en faction
1863
Edwin Forbes captured the quiet, exhausting moments of Civil War life in this sketch of a weary infantryman leaning heavily on his rifle. As a special artist for Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Forbes traveled with the Union Army of the Potomac, sketching soldiers in the field rather than from a safe studio. The date scrawled at the bottom—August 20th, 1862—places this right in the thick of the war, showing a soldier taking a rare breather. Forbes later turned many of these field sketches into famous etchings, giving us one of the most authentic visual records of the American Civil War.
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