Winslow Homer on the Springfield Rifled Musket
“Cavalry Soldier Loading a Rifle” by Winslow Homer, circa 1864. Black chalk and white crayon on gray-green laid paper. Donated to the Smithsonian in 1912 by Charles Savage Homer, Jr..
At the time the sketch was made, Homer was a relatively unknown 28-year-old artist filing war art from the camps of the Army of the Potomac for Harper’s Weekly.
Assention 1912-12-99, via Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Recto: A soldier in Civil War uniform, stands in the foreground, feet spread, holding a rifle placed diagonally across his body in his left hand, using a long rod in his right hand to tamp gun powder down the barrel of the rifle.
