Artist: Thomas Waterman Wood
Date: 1865
Size: 72 x 51 cm
Museum: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, United States Of America)
Technique: Oil On Canvas
This work, painted at the close of the Civil War, forms a narrative triptych (84.12a, b, c) of African American military service. In "The Contraband" (84.12a)—a term that referred to enslaved people who fled to Union lines at the beginning of the conflict—the self-emancipated man appears in a U.S. Army Provost Marshall General office, eager to enlist. The Recruit (84.12b) represents him as proudly ready for military service. In "The Veteran" (84.12c), he is depicted as an amputee possibly seeking his pension in the same office where he first enlisted, or returning to military service. By the war’s end, African American men made up more than ten percent of the United States Army and Navy, fighting bravely in so-called U.S. Colored Troops. Wood, a White Vermont-born painter, produced this empathetic work in New York at a time when caricatured representations of African Americans were the norm.
Artist |
|
|---|---|
Download |
|
Permissions |
Free for non commercial use. See below. |
 |
This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. However - you may not use this image for commercial purposes and you may not alter the image or remove the watermark. This applies to the United States, Canada, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.
|
Note that a few countries have copyright terms longer than 70 years: Mexico has 100 years, Colombia has 80 years, and Guatemala and Samoa have 75 years. This image may
not be in the public domain in these countries, which moreover do not implement the
