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Army Boots


The Union’s Army of the Potomac, encamped in close proximity to slavery throughout eastern Virginia, employed hundreds of contrabands as cooks, laundrymen, valets, and teamsters. Winslow Homer recorded this aspect of camp life in an 1865 painting called Army Boots, of two young boys inside of a tent belonging to the second corps, as noted by the red trefoil emblem painted on the canvas. Two hands of playing cards lie at their reach, while a dusty pair of army boots and a tin of black polish lie waiting in front of them.


Winslow Homer (1836–1910)
Oil on canvas, 1865
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution
Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn Foundation, 1966

 

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