in new york, homer took a few lessons in painting from frederic rondel. rondel was a rather sentimental landscape painter who had little influence on homer's style beyond his technical instruction in the use of oils. when the civil war began, harper's commissioned the artist to depict life at the front. rovi behind the lines with the potomac army, homer produced a series of closelybserved studies of camp life. homer's paintings of this period have an anecdotal or literary quality in keeping with the traditions of magazine illustration, but he also places new emphasis on pictorial design and the purely visual character of a scene-- qualities typical of the photographs of mathew brady and others. like the photographers of the civil war, whose equipment made action scenes impossible, homer preferred static group formations, and yet the feeling of directness in recording the ordinary lends to his work a special force. prisoners from the front, with its profound sense of the resignation, exhaustion, and human cost of war, evoked the admiration of both critics

in new york, homer took a few lessons in painting from frederic rondel. rondel was a rather sentimental landscape painter who had little influence on homer's style beyond his technical instruction in the use of oils. when the civil war began, harper's commissioned the artist to depict life at the front. roving behind the lines with the potomac army, homer produced a series of closelybserved studies of camp life. homer's paintings of this period have an anecdotal or literary quality in keeping with the traditions of magazine illustration, but he also places new emphasis on pictorial design and the purely visual character of a scene-- qualities typical of the photographs of mathew brady and others. like the photographers of the civil war, whose equipment made action scenes impossible, homer preferred static group formations, and yet the feeling of directness in recording the ordinary lends to his work a special force. prisoners from the front, with its profound sense of the resignation, exhaustion, and human cost of war, evoked the admiration of both critic