Saturday, October 12, 2019 • 2:00 PM – Admission $10.00, Members Free

Art & Photography of the Civil War

ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY OF THE CIVIL WAR will focus on the effects of the Civil War on American landscape and genre painting, and on the new (at the time) medium of photography.

We will look at the large range of works created before (slavery, racism), during (lives of soldiers, battles), and following the Civil War war (Negro struggles, reconstruction). We will look at work by some of America’s finest artists including Hudson River School painters like Frederick Church (metaphorical paintings of the War) and Sanford Gifford (a soldier during the Civil War – lives of the soldiers); genre painters, William Sidney Mount and Eastman Johnson (lives and struggles of slaves); journalists like Winslow Homer whose works relating to the lives of soldiers were published in Harper’s Weekly; and finally the photographs bringing Abraham Lincoln to vivid life as well as the horrors of war by famed photographers Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner and George Barnard.

We will address how these works of art not only unleashed historical events of a great historical moment, but also wrought great changes in the nation’s visual culture and character.

Presenter: Cynthia Andersen

Cynthia Andersen was a New York City school teacher and special education supervisor.  She earned her B.A. from Hunter College, majoring in History with a concentration in Early American Culture. She also earned a Master’s degree in Education and Art History and a School Administration Degree from Queens College.  Cynthia, an amateur painter, has been researching, writing and lecturing about the Hudson River School of Painting for more than ten years. She expanded her Hudson River School of Painting to 19^th Century American Art which includes Luminism, Art and Photography of the Civil War and American Impressionism.  Her lectures have been seen by the various Sloop Clubs; affiliates of the Clearwater, up and down the Hudson River, as well as MALFA (Material Archives and Laboratory for Archaeology), the Scarsdale Women’s’ Organization, the Scarsdale Adult School, the UFT (United Federation of Teachers in NYC) and Westchester Community College’s Mainstream Program. Most recently Westchester Community College made Cynthia an adjunct teacher of art history.