Alabama Loyalists Greeting the Federal Gun-Boats, from the portfolio Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated)

Kara Walker, Alabama Loyalists Greeting the Federal Gun-Boats, from the portfolio Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 2005, offset lithograph and screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2008.19.1.1, © 2005 Kara Walker
Kara Walker, Alabama Loyalists Greeting the Federal Gun-Boats, from the portfolio Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 2005, offset lithograph and screenprint on paper, 3953 in. (99.1134.6 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2008.19.1.1, © 2005 Kara Walker

Artwork Details

Title
Alabama Loyalists Greeting the Federal Gun-Boats, from the portfolio Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated)
Artist
Printer
LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies, Columbia University
Publisher
LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies, Columbia University
Date
2005
Location
Not on view
Dimensions
3953 in. (99.1134.6 cm)
Copyright
© 2005 Kara Walker
Credit Line
Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment
Mediums Description
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Classifications
Subjects
  • African American
  • History — United States — Civil War
Object Number
2008.19.1.1

Artwork Description

For her series Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), Kara Walker appropriated and enlarged select illustration from Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War, a two-volume publication of 1866. She chose fifteen wood engravings, enlarged them through offset lithography, and overlaid them with large, black stencils. Walker’s signature silhouettes interrupt and transform the nineteenth-century narratives of battle, death, and retreat in these large-scale prints. According to the artist, the Civil War prints from Harper’s “are the landscapes that I imagine exist in the back of my somewhat more austere wall pieces,” namely the large black silhouette compositions for which she is best known.
Walker’s scenes are set in the American South before and during the Civil War. They play off stereotypes to portray, often grotesquely, life on the plantation, where masters and mistresses and slave men, women, and children enact a subverted version of the past. Walker suggests a critical understanding of the past and proposes an examination of contemporary racial and gender stereotypes.

Multiplicity, 2011

Works by this artist (10 items)

Chuzo Tamotzu, Landscape (Towaco, N.J.), ca. 1935-1937, lithograph, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Evander Childs High School, Bronx, New York through the General Services Administration, 1975.83.91
Landscape (Towaco, N.J.)
Dateca. 1935-1937
lithograph
Not on view
Chuzo Tamotzu, Queens Landscape, brush and ink on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Evander Childs High School, Bronx, New York through the General Services Administration, 1975.83.112
Queens Landscape
brush and ink on paper
Not on view
Chuzo Tamotzu, Landscape (Towaco, N.J.), ca. 1935-1937, lithograph, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Audrey McMahon, 1968.98.48
Landscape (Towaco, N.J.)
Dateca. 1935-1937
lithograph
Not on view
Chuzo Tamotzu, Cats, ca. 1935-1937, lithograph, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from D.C. Public Library, 1967.72.255
Cats
Dateca. 1935-1937
lithograph
Not on view

More Artworks from the Collection

Claire Falkenstein, City is Man, 1941-1952, linocut, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of The Falkenstein Foundation, 2019.27.14, ©1997, The Falkenstein Foundation
City is Man
Date1941-1952
linocut
Not on view
Claire Falkenstein, Untitled, 1976, embossed paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of The Falkenstein Foundation, 2019.27.18, ©1997, The Falkenstein Foundation
Untitled
Date1976
embossed paper
Not on view
Claire Falkenstein, Mandala, 1977, lithograph, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of The Falkenstein Foundation, 2019.27.19, ©1997, The Falkenstein Foundation
Mandala
Date1977
lithograph
Not on view
Nathan Oliveira, Site with Blue and White, 1978, monotype, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Moses Lasky, 2004.32.14
Site with Blue and White
Date1978
monotype
Not on view