Art During Wartime - Book Talk with Dr. Vanessa Schulman

While the Civil War raged on, many northern artists depicted everyday life rather than grand battles or landscapes of noble sacrifice. Amidst a conflict that was upending antebellum social norms, these painters created realistic scenes of mundane events, known as genre paintings. While many of the paintings seem to show ordinary incidents, artists worked to connect their visuals to larger concerns. With attention to how the war shaped new definitions of gender, race, and disability, Art during Wartime uncovers the complexity of these genre paintings, using seven case studies of artists who explored how the war instigated social change and influenced northern opinions about current events. In this book talk, the author will briefly outline the book's primary arguments and then discuss how three of the artists studied--Thomas Hicks, Vincent Colyer, and Eastman Johnson--used genre art to spark complex conversations about American life. Dr. Vanessa Meikle Schulman is an Associate Professor of Art History at George Mason University. Dr. Schulman specializes in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century art and visual culture of the United States. She received her PhD in Visual Studies from the University of California, Irvine in 2010, and has published her research in the academic journals American Art, Invisible Culture, Nineteenth Century Studies, American Periodicals, and Early Popular Visual Culture. Her book, Work Sights: The Visual Culture of Industry in Nineteenth-Century America, was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2015. Art During Wartime: Painting Everyday Life in the Civil War North is her second book publication. Tickets are $10 to the general public and free for museum members. Members, please call the museum to reserve your ticket. Tickets must be purchased in advance as there is limited seating. Questions? Please e-mail contact@leefendallhouse.org or call the museum at 703-548-1789.