ORThe Open Room
Digital gallery
Back to the NGA collection
The image depicts a battlefield scene with figures in trenches. The inscription reads "A shell in the trenches before Richmond." The drawing shows chaotic movement and intensity, sketched with swift lines on brown paper. It captures immediacy and turmoil, possibly representing smoke, dirt, and movement related to an explosion or shell impact. The tone is tense and hectic, with urgency and action conveyed through rough pencil marks.
Read the visual description

The image depicts a battlefield scene with figures in trenches. The inscription reads "A shell in the trenches before Richmond." The drawing shows chaotic movement and intensity, sketched with swift lines on brown paper. It captures immediacy and turmoil, possibly representing smoke, dirt, and movement related to an explosion or shell impact. The tone is tense and hectic, with urgency and action conveyed through rough pencil marks.

National Gallery of Art · Drawing

A Shell in the Trenches before Richmond [recto]

Winslow Homer

Date
1862
Medium
charcoal and graphite with watercolor on wove paper
Dimensions
sheet: 17.8 × 25.3 cm (7 × 9 15/16 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Accession number
1996.121.14.a
Credit line
Gift of Dr. Edmund Louis Gray Zalinski, II
Time span
1851 to 1875
Department
CG-W
Original NGA record Wikidata

Subjects and terms

  • American
  • group
  • figure
  • Realist
  • Civil War
  • military
  • Civil War soldiers
  • Union Army
Provenance

Major Edmund Louis Gray Zalinski, New York, by gift of Homer, 1904; Edmund Robbins Zalinski, his son, by bequest, 1909; Edmund Louis Gray Zalinski II, his son, Philadelphia, by gift, 1955; gift to NGA, 1996.

Inscription

upper right in graphite: A Shell in the Trenches / before Richmond

NGA object ID 98224. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.