Thrilling, harrowing life of a combat artist

The Picket spoke last year with curator and writer Harry Katz about Alfred Waud and other superb Civil War sketch artists.

This month, Katz writes for National Geographic about the "specials" and their contributions to informing Americans about battles and leaders.

"The world came to understand the Civil War through the eyes of battlefield artists," Katz writes. "Living alongside the troops, combat illustrators risked death, injury, and disease to convey the blow-by-blow of battle with pencil and pen, charcoal, and crayon. Their work, sketched in the direst of circumstances, shows terrible violence, but also moments of surprising grace."

Katz' new work, "Civil War Sketch Book," is being released today.

• Article about artists, gallery

Illustration, Battle of Shiloh, Becker Collection, is in May issue of National Geographic. "Shell burst in the spot sketched [center left] killed horses & wounded all the postition [sic] and tore Sergeant Tosey previously wounded in pieces," wrote Henri Lovie. He called this scene the Union's "Desperate Retreat."

Part 2 of Alfred Waud: Combat artist brought war, postwar South to ordinary Americans

Alfred R. Waud was perhaps the Civil War’s most famous combat artist, a familiar bearded figure on horseback, almost always headed to the Union Army of the Potomac’s front lines.

With derring-do, paper, pencil, charcoal and china white pigment, Waud documented people, places and the realities of war.

Calling Waud prolific is an understatement. He produced thousands of sketches, shipping his work to New York, where magazines, including the venerable Harper’s Weekly, brought the war to the people.

This was before the mass production of photographs.

What Waud saw, Americans saw.

He carried a revolver and was known to fire, occasionally, at Confederate lines.

Less known, but perhaps artistically and journalistically as important, were his postwar trips out west. He documented New Orleans, the Mississippi River, other portions of the South and, even, the Great Chicago Fire.

Waud died in 1891 in Marietta, Ga., while touring and sketching Southern battlefields. He was 62.

Essential reading on Waud includes Frederic E. Ray’s “Alfred R. Waud: Civil War Artist.”

We asked three curators to tell us about the essential Waud (pronounced “WODE”). Please click images to enlarge.

SARA W. DUKE, curator, popular and applied graphic art, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

Duke’s first duty at the Library of Congress was cataloguing the more than 1,200 Waud works in the collection.

For her, it’s the reality of the artist’s subjects that make his work special.

“You can really see the faces,” Duke says. “He is capturing the likenesses of people.”

Duke’s comments on Waud bring to mind Robert Capa, the 20th-century war photographer Robert Capa, who said, “If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough.”

Waud was usually at the front. One of the sketches in the library’s collection carries drops of blood, when he apparently got nicked.

And he braved sniper’s bullets during the Petersburg siege, climbing a tree to get a drawing of the Confederate lines for Gen. George Meade (left).

“He is positioning himself to see what is happening,” Duke says.

Waud, who sometimes wrote articles to accompany his illustrations, was the only artist to record Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg.

He and his fellow “Bohemians” were the true visual artists of the time, largely because photographers concentrated on still scenes.

“The dead were not a problem,” Duke says of the lensmen. “War action was impossible.”

Waud is most known for providing sketches for Harper’s Weekly, hugely popular in the North during the Civil War.

Harper’s Weekly, Duke says, was interested in propaganda and wanted the public to think the war was always going well.

The publication took an image of Union soldiers slogging in the snow near Falmouth, Va., (above, the original) and made it cheerier. An 1862 sketch of wounded soldiers being assisted at Antietam was altered to hide the sight of an amputated limb.

“I think he was well liked. The men and the officers respected him,” Duke says of Waud. “To me, it’s his relationship with soldiers.”

Waud depicted African-American soldiers mustering out in 1866 in Little Rock, Ark. They are shown being greeted by family members.

“It [shows them as] empowered, as opposed to liberated,” the curator says.

DANIEL HAMMER, head of reader services, The Historic New Orleans Collection

Hammer is impressed by Waud’s ability to capture more than the immediate subject. The Englishman, he said, had an eye for acute detail.

The Historic News Orleans Collection, which is a museum, archive and publisher, has thousands of works by Waud and his brother, William. That includes Alfred’s early sketchbooks.

Waud traveled to New Orleans to record Reconstruction and returned in 1871 to travel the Mississippi River. He made it as far north as St. Louis, where he was dispatched to the Chicago fire. In 1872, Waud made sketches for "Picturesque America."

In the Civil War, Hammer says, Waud captured scenes quickly.

In New Orleans, “he captures human characters in a cosmopolitan city.”

Waud’s works include market scenes, the opera, bar patrons and, of course, the Mississippi River.

“His energy seemed to match the country he adopted,” said Hammer. “He also was a journalist, not just an artist.”

Hammer also lauds Waud’s accuracy in the scaling of buildings in New Orleans.

“They were meant to depict the scene as it was,” he says of the collection.

HARRY L. KATZ is an independent curator and writer. He is the former head curator in the Prints and Photographs Division at the Library of Congress. He is editor and co-author of “Baseball Americana: Treasures of the Library of Congress” and “Herblock: The Life and Work of the Great Political Cartoonist.”

Katz ranks Waud second behind Frank Vizetelly as the best Civil War sketch artist, able to get as close as possible to the truth.

“He epitomized the life of a sketch artist. They were photojournalists before they existed,” says Katz. “He was larger than life.”

The well-dressed correspondent was gregarious, a mischief maker and “was quite a character.”

Waud covered virtually every campaign in the Eastern Theater. “He was very brave,” Katz said. (Below, "Advance into the Crater before Petersburg.")

“He was one of the first to recognize that this was about death and dying and destruction.”

“Special artists,” as they were known, sketched their work on paper and had it sent to publishers, where craftsmen made wood block engravings. Sometimes, the emotion of a scene might get lost.

“He had a reputation among his peers,” Katz said of Waud.

The curator has a book coming out next year entitled, “Civil War Sketchbook: Drawings from the Battle Front.” It will include works by Waud, Edwin Forbes, Winslow Homer and artists in the Joseph Becker Collection.

• Read Part 1 of our report on Alfred R. Waud

Credits (sequentially): Photograph of Waud, 1864, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-cwpb-03706; "Ammoniacal gas engine, New Orleans streetcar," The Historic New Orleans Collection, accession no. 1965.90.51; "In Front of Petersburg, sketch made for Gen. Meade, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-22584; "Winter Campaigning," Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-22444; African-American soldiers mustered out, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-21005; "Noon on Sunday at the French Market N. Orleans", The Historic New Orleans Collection, accession no. 1965.13; "Bar of the Natchez," The Historic New Orleans Collection, accession no. 1965.90.33; "The Mouth of the Mississippi / a tow approaching the Gulf," The Historic New Orleans Collection, accession no. 1965.79; "Advance into the Crater before Petersburg," Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-20996.

Part 1 of Alfred Waud: Living historian brings Civil War sketch artist off the page

John Rapp would gladly walk in Alfred Waud’s shoes.

From his felt hat and bewhiskered face to his leather haversack and boots, Rapp projects a living image of the famous Civil War sketch artist -- minus the English accent.

For more than 10 years, Rapp, 55, of Cornelius, N.C, has researched and portrayed what some consider the greatest illustrator of the war.

Authenticity is paramount.

Rapp takes school construction paper and weathers it to approximate the paper and colors used by Waud.

“I put it out in the sunlight to make the same shade,” he says.

Waud (pronounced WODE), saw it all with the Union’s Army of the Potomac -- from the bright-eyed optimism in 1861 to Gen. Robert E. Lee tired ride (below) following his surrender at Appomattox Courthouse in southern Virginia.

The artist, most famous for his illustrations used in Harper’s Weekly, was known for his bravery and quality of work.

Because reproducing photographs was in its infancy, Waud and other illustrators principally brought the action and army life to the public.

Why was Rapp, an 8th grade American history teacher in Charlotte, drawn to Waud specificially?

“The immediacy of his sketches,” Rapp says. “The freezing of action.”

“Here is a guy who was on the front line,” he added.

As a member of the Bohemian Brigade, a confederation of living historians doing impressions of Civil War correspondents and artists, Rapp has done significant research into the journalist he portrays.

“We are so far off the edge,” Rapp says of his Bohemian brothers. “Most of the people [who come to events] don’t know about artists. I am telling them something new.”

Rapp made several trips to the Library of Congress, which has a large collection of Waud’s works, and as a registered researcher he has held originals.

“It is chilling,” says the native of Shoemakersville, Pa., north of Reading. “It is thrilling. That this piece of paper was at Gettysburg.”

Rapp also has researched Alfred’s brother, William, a fine illustrator in his own right.

Other research includes a study of “Alfred E. Waud: Sketch Artist” by Frederic E. Ray and Philip Van Doren Sterns’s “They Were There,” a look at Waud and other Civil War journalists promoted by newspapers and weeklies of the time as “Special Artists.”

The four-volume, “Battles and Leaders of the Civil War” was the first significant Civil War book to portray the effort of these gregarious chroniclers.

Rapp, who sold RVs before switching to teaching, makes a reference to a Waud sketch (above) of the skirmish between the 14th Brooklyn and Confederate Cavalry at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862.

“You can see the action going on,” he says.

Rapp, who includes sailing among his hobbies, has a particular fondness for doing his Waud impression at Gettysburg.

“Waud’s Rock” is the site of famed Civil War photographer Timothy O. Sullivan’s image of the jaunty artist, who was born in England in 1828.

Most of the time, Rapp sketches likenesses (right) of Waud’s work, but he sometimes does extemporaneous sketches for the public and friends.

He enjoys educating individuals about the amazing experiences of such artists.

“I’m a pretty good artist. Nothing fancy. I try to reproduce his work faithfully.”

Rapp does not sell his work. “I do it for the enjoyment and to educate.”

Some years, Rapp may go to 10 battle re-enactments or living history events. In 2011, so far he is going to an event in Rockford, N.C., a 19th century plantation and a meeting of a Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War camp.

“People want to know who I am and why I am dressed like that,” he says.

Readers had plenty of material during the war, including the New York Illustrated News and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. Rapp totes copies of Harper’s Weekly, which was read by about 1.5 million people each time it was printed.

Among Waud’s contemporaries were Theodore R. Davis and Edwin Forbes. Forbes was “better artistically but the immediacy and intimacy of Waud was different,” says Rapp.

Civil War photos were limited generally to camp life and scenes after battles.

“If you want to know what war looked like you have to look at the sketches,” says Rapp.

Upcoming in Picket: A deeper look at Waud's work, why he is important and his legacy. We'll look at collections in Washington, D.C., and New Orleans and will speak with curators.

Images: Photo of John Rapp, "Waud Rock" and his drawings, courtesy of John Rapp; photograph of Waud by Timothy O'Sullivan, Civil War Treasures from the New York Historical Society, digital ID nhnycw/ad ad07001; Waud drawing at Antietam, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-21027; Waud sketch of Lee, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-21320