Our Army Before Yorktown, Virginia

Our Army Before Yorktown, Virginia is a significant wood engraving on paper created by Winslow Homer in 1862. This powerful print was published by Harper's Weekly, a leading illustrated newspaper during the American Civil War, reflecting the intense demand for visual documentation of the conflict across the United States.

The subject captures the tension and preparation surrounding the Union siege of Yorktown, Virginia, a critical early campaign in the conflict. Homer, who frequently served as an artist-correspondent for the magazine, used this opportunity to document the reality of military encampments and the daily lives of Union soldiers, offering a humanizing contrast to the more generalized maps and battle reports common at the time. The scene shows the vast scale of the Union presence, featuring soldiers gathered informally, reflecting the logistical scale required for such a massive operation.

The choice of medium, wood engraving, was essential for the rapid production and wide dissemination of images during the 1860s, enabling publications like Harper's Weekly to provide the public with near real-time views of events. The detail captured in the print highlights Homer’s nascent skill in rendering complex outdoor scenes and large groups of figures, laying the groundwork for his future artistic mastery. This work demonstrates the early importance of illustrated journalism in shaping public perception of the war. This important historical and artistic record of the early Civil War period is classified as a print and resides in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.