Homer, Winslow | Extremely Rare Series of Civil War Lithographs by Winslow Homer

Homer, Winslow

[Campaign Sketches. Boston: Published by L. Prang & Co., [1863]

Six lithograph plates (357 x 276 mm), each matted; some minor marginal soiling and edgewear, one ("Letter from Home") with light stain into image. Lacking the very uncommon original wrapper. Half blue morocco folding-case gilt, chemise.

This extremely rare series of lithographs by renowned American artist Winslow Homer is the artist's first graphic publication produced to stand on its own. It is his most important published work from his formative Civil War period, and a landmark in his career as a printmaker. Indeed, Campaign Sketches can be seen as the first American artist's book.

Homer and Prang probably originally intended a larger work, to be issued in parts, since the front wrapper (which also serves as title-page) states, "Part I." The part sold for $1.50; however, this is all that was ever published, and the work's rarity suggests it did not sell well. Prang and Homer collaborated on a completely different project the following year: a series of small cards entitled Life in Camp, caricatures rather than finished large prints.

Like much of Homer's Civil War work, Campaign Sketches focuses  on incidents in the daily life of soldiers, rather than battle scenes. The plates are "The Baggage Train," "The Coffee Call," "Foraging," "The Letter for Home," "Our Jolly Cook," and "A Pass Time."

Campaign Sketches is tremendously rare: we find no complete copies (and very few single lithographs) in either the book or print auction records. 

REFERENCE

Goodrich, The Graphic Art of Winslow Homer (New York, 1968), reproductions of the cover and all six lithographs as pls. 13–20; Grossman, Echo of a Distant Drum: Winslow Homer and the Civil War (New York, 1974); Neely & Holzer, The Union Image (Chapel Hill, 2000), pp.69–72; Peters, America on Stone, p.223; Wood & Dalton, Winslow Homer's Images of Blacks (Austin, 1988)