Gettysburg Wheat Field
This atypical Civil War panorama shows the artist looking over a split-rail fence at the Gettysburg battlefield where one of America's greatest armed conflicts raged for three bloody days. Brady, America's self-appointed photographic "historian," arrived at Gettysburg several days after the battle had ended (July 3, 1863) and after the last of the 7,500 dead had been buried. The photograph's misleading title is derived from the image's reproduction in Harper's Weekly three weeks after the battle. Current scholarship now confirms that Union General John F. Reynolds was shot by a Confederate marksman beyond the visible tree line known as McPherson's Woods, not in the wheatfield. Nonetheless, the ...
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1863
Albumen silver print from glass negative
33.65.391
Image and text © Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2019
Where you'll find this
Permanent collection