The Gun Boat Candidate, At the Battle of Malvern Hill

Louis Maurer

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Showing General George McClellan perched on a boom of "Galena," one of the Union's ironclad battleships, Currier & Ives reminds viewers of that leader's signal failures in an 1862 Union campaign against Richmond. In May, a flotilla of ironclads led by Galena were repulsed by Confederate guns, with the general refusing to call in a nearby troops for backup. This was followed by the Seven Battles, concluding on July 1 with the disastrous Battle of Malvern Hill, seen here in the distance. Surveying the action through a telescope, McClellan says "Fight on my brave Soldiers and push the enemy to the wall, from this spanker boom your beloved General looks down upon you." The battle concluded with a Union retreat to the river for gunboat protection, ending any chance that the Army of the Potomac might take the Confederate capital in 1862.

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