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Civil War Era Drawings
from the Becker Collection
2011 marks the 150th anniversary of the Civil War
The Becker Archive contains approximately 650 hitherto unexhibited and undocumented drawings by Joseph Becker and his colleagues, nineteenth-century artists who worked as artist-reporters for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper observing, drawing, and sending back for publication images of the Civil War, the construction of the railroads, the laying of the transatlantic cable in Ireland, the Chinese in the West, the Indian wars, the Chicago fire, and other aspects of nineteenth-century American culture.
There has been no major exhibition or scholarly survey featuring Civil War drawings since the 1961 centennial, and at that time the Becker Collection had not yet come to light. Civil War Drawings from the Becker Collection is the first opportunity for scholars and enthusiasts to see selections from this important and unknown collection and appreciate these national treasures as artworks.
By creating accurate combat sketches drawn not from their imagination, but from close, on the spot observation, [civil war sketch artists] caught the action and evoked the drama of being there, in the midst of war. Their genius as visual reporters was expressed in their ability to identify the focal point of a scene quickly, blocking out the composition with telling details in minutes, and fleshing it out later that night while their memories were still fresh.
— Harry Katz, former Curator of Prints and Drawings
of the Library of Congress
The “first-hand” drawings selected for this exhibition, most of which have never been published, document in lively and specific ways key developments in the history of America as it struggled to establish its national identity.
Civil War Drawings from the Becker Collection is curated by Judith Bookbinder and Sheila Gallagher and circulated by CATE. An exhibition of drawings from the Becker Collection premiered at the McMullen Museum at Boston College in the exhibition First Hand: Civil War Era Drawings from the Becker Collection, which was organized by the McMullen Museum and underwritten by Boston College and Patrons of the McMullen Museum.
Read the Civil War Times article, February 2010
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