American as (apple) pie. Winslow Homer's depiction of a hungry Union soldier is acquired by SoCal museum, which will show it off Sunday in revamped galleries

Winslow Homer's 1863 painting "The Sutler's Tent" debuts Sunday (Courtesy The Huntington)

A Civil War camp scene painted by Winslow Homer – who captured war’s fury at the front and documented soldiers’ lives behind the lines – will debut Sunday as part of the relaunch of an American art gallery at a Southern California museum.

Homer (below) was in his mid-20s when he became an artist-reporter for Harper’s Weekly, embedding with the Union army in Virginia. While most of his work about the conflict was illustrations, he did produce several paintings, including “The Sutler’s Tent,” which was acquired by The Huntington.

The San Marino, Calif., institution recently announced the acquisition of the work, which was purchased for an undisclosed amount from a New York-based gallery. The Ahmanson Foundation funded the acquisition in honor of the 250^th anniversary of the founding of the United States, officials said.

The 1863 painting, only 16-1/4 inches by 12 inches, shows two Yankee cavalry troopers near a tent, one munching on what appears to be a slice of pie (another theory has it as bread and cheese).

The blog Los Angeles County Museum on Fire points out the celebrated artist first depicted the subject in an 1862 sketch, which shows more than a half dozen members of the 3^rd Pennsylvania Cavalry standing near a tent. One of them is sitting on a rail, enjoying a snack.

The drawing was modified for publication in Harper’s Weekly and entitled "Thanksgiving in Camp."

“Harper's Weekly reproduced Homer's war art as wood engravings. ‘The Sutler's Tent’ is related to a Thanksgiving-themed illustration that ran in November 1862,” according to William Poundstone’s blog. “That means the engraving came before the painting, dated 1863. The horizontal-format print shows many more figures than the painting and clearly shows the tent. … Homer evidently felt the tight cropping of the painting made a stronger composition.”

Homer's 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry (National Gallery of Art) and Harper's Weekly version (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Homer honed his craft during the Civil War. A 2015 article in Yale News describes how the self-taught artist had to work quickly and be an astute observer. The young man grew a beard like many soldiers and also wore worn and dirty clothing.

“Homer, like other war correspondents, considered what he did to be a public service and felt as though he endured some of the same kind of experiences as soldiers did,” Keely Orgeman, a curator with the Yale University Art Gallery, told the publication. “When Homer was stationed in Yorktown on the front, he was unable to eat for three days, along with all of the soldiers. According to his mother, he was completely changed by that experience.”

Homer’s other well-known Civil War works include “Prisoners from the Front,” “Home, Sweet Home” and “A Sharp Shooter on Picket Duty.”

Homer's "Prisoners from the Front" is owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and displayed in New York.

The purchase of “The Sutler’s Tent” was first reported by the Los Angeles Times.

Annabel Adams, vice president of communications and marketing for The Huntington, told the Picket the reasoning for acquiring the museum’s first Homer painting was “especially important as we set to launch a reinstallation of American art galleries on December 7 as part of our ‘This Land Is’ initiative.”

The multiyear effort includes the reinstallation of seven galleries in the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art.” One reopened in September; six will debut Sunday.

As Poundstone reported, “The Sutler’s Tent” will be the centerpiece of a room about the Civil War and Reconstruction. On display will be a signed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation from The Huntington’s Library and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s scultpure "Why Born Enslaved!," The Huntington said in a news release.

Adams said the institution’s Civil War holdings are renowned. Among them:

-- Papers relating to President Abraham Lincoln’s bodyguard Ward Hill Lamon;

-- Ciphered communications between Abraham Lincoln and army commanders;

-- Lincoln memorabilia and manuscript collector Judd Stewart;

-- Scrapbooks made by war correspondent and illustrator James E. Taylor (left, courtesy The Huntington);

-- Alfred R. Waud’s 1863 drawing of Rebel prisoners at Brandy Station.

Christina Nielson, the Hannah and Russel Kully Director of the Art Museum at The Huntington, said “Sutler’s Tent” expands the dialogue between the art and library collections.

“As we look toward the 250th anniversary of the United States, the painting invites reflection on a pivotal chapter in our nation’s history -- one that continues to shape the American experience,” she said in the news release.

The Huntington also features botanical gardens and a research center.

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

Battlefield sketch artists worked quickly

A Civil War sketch artist sat on a stool, or stood silently at a spot where he could observe the battle. His hands worked feverishly, trying to capture moments in history with pencil sketches. He was dressed as a civilian, and hoped no one would take him for a soldier—and shoot in his direction. His purpose was to give an accurate description of Civil War conflicts for such publications as Harper's Weekly. As a Civil War re-enactor, Doug Laman, of rural Pineville, Mo., portrays a Harper's Weekly special correspondent and sketch artist. • Article