Top of page

Category: Drawings

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Antietam: Can One Picture Tell the Story?

Posted by: Jeff Bridgers

The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. If you had to pick just one picture to represent the Battle of Antietam, which would you choose? A photograph of a young girl wearing mourning ribbons and holding a photograph of her father could symbolize the wide-spread and lasting losses …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

A History Quivering with Life: Civil War Drawings

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Imagine an expanse of hilly countryside. Fill it with with hundreds, perhaps thousands of men, battling to the death. Now put yourself into that scene. Listen to the clash of metal as swords and bayonets meet, the boom of cannons firing, the voices yelling. You’re in danger: there are bullets whizzing by and men dying around …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Life was Made for Love and Cheer: National Poetry Month

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

When each heart gives out its best, Then the talk is full of zest: Light your fire and never fear, Life was made for love and cheer. (Henry Van Dyke, “Inscriptions for a Friend’s House”) When American illustrator Elizabeth Shippen Green created a watercolor painting to accompany Henry Van Dyke’s “Inscriptions for a Friend’s House,” …