Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac – Drawn by Mr. Thomas Nast (from "Harper's Weekly")

Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac – Drawn by Mr. Thomas Nast (from "Harper's Weekly")

Thomas Nast

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In the fall of 1863, the Army of the Potomac gathered outside Washington and prepared to move south. This image, designed by Nast and published in Harper’s Weekly in mid-October, was intended to hearten Northern readers. A vast military array lines up to march past General George Meade and other Union commanders on a plain near the Potomac River. The accompanying text notes, "It is seldom that the artist…succeeds in conveying to the spectator the idea of immense numbers of men…Mr. Nast has…shown us the whole corps d’armee in active evolution. A nobler sight it is seldom possible to witness." With a victory at Gettysburg behind them, the Union was ready to engage General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. It would be another year and a half before the conflict ended.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac – Drawn by Mr. Thomas Nast (from "Harper's Weekly")Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac – Drawn by Mr. Thomas Nast (from "Harper's Weekly")Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac – Drawn by Mr. Thomas Nast (from "Harper's Weekly")Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac – Drawn by Mr. Thomas Nast (from "Harper's Weekly")Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac – Drawn by Mr. Thomas Nast (from "Harper's Weekly")

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.