The Army of the Potomac

John Badger Bachelder

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This lithograph details the Union army’s supply wagons and soldiers retreating down the Virginia Peninsula during the Seven Days Fight, a series of battles fought between June 25 and July 1, 1862. Once Major General George McClellan’s attempt to take the Confederate capital of Richmond had failed, his army was forced back to the James River. Bachelder, a New England artist, here emphasizes the scale of the Union forces with long lines of horse-drawn wagons and infantry platoons waiting to ford Bear Creek. A steep fissured bank challenges the descending wagons, several of which have foundered. At left and right drummers wade across the stream and fusiliers pull cannons up the bank. In the foreground, infantrymen rest around a campfire near two cavalrymen who survey the scene. Bachelder traveled with the army, and his military sketches were described by Union General John Caldwell as "by far the most accurate of any I have ever seen."

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art