Terra Collection Initiative: Home Front: Daily Life in the Civil War North

About the Exhibition

To commemorate the 150^th anniversary of the United States Civil War, the Terra Foundation for American Art partnered with the Newberry Library on the exhibition Home Front: Daily Life in the Civil War North. The exhibition focused on the enormous and costly effect the war had on civilians, using more than 100 items—paintings, sheet music, and magazine illustrations—to examine the culture of the Northern home front and illustrate the war’s impact on all areas of life. From household economies to the absence of young men at home and from war relief work to the erasure of frontier Indians from the national consciousness, Home Front revealed the all-consuming nature of this transformative war.

Dates and Venues

September 27, 2013–March 24, 2014
The Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois

Select Works in the Exhibition from the Terra Foundation Collection

A view of a broad, still river. The left bank is grassy with tall trees while in the distance small hills rise on the right bank of the river. — Alfred Thompson Bricher, *The Hudson River at West Point*, 1864. Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1993.17

Painting of a red and blue sky that resembles the American flag. — Fredrick Edwin Church, *Our Banner in the Sky*, 1861. Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1992.27

A painting of an expanse of land that has been deforested, with stumps of trees scattered in the foreground. It is dusk, and a mountain rises in the distance. — Sanford Robinson Gifford, *Hunter Mountain, Twilight*, 1866. Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1999.57

Painting of tall ships docked. — Samuel Colman, Jr., *Ships Unloading, New York*, 1868. Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1984.4

A boy sits on a fence in field. — Winslow Homer, *On Guard*, 1864. Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1994.11

Two apples sit on top of a tin cup. They are brightly lit against a dark background. — William Sidney Mount, *Fruit Piece: Apples on Tin Cups*, 1864. Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1999.100

Painting of a group of people having a picnic in a clearing in the forest. — Lilly Martin Spencer, *The Home of the Red, White, and Blue*, c. 1867–68. Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Art Acquisition Endowment Fund, 2007.1

A view of a river winding between hills covered in trees. It is autumn, and the trees are brown, orange, red, and green. — Thomas Moran, *Autumn Afternoon, the Wissahickon*, 1864. Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1999.99

Text

Publication

Brownlee, Peter John, Sarah Burns, Diane Dillon, Daniel Greene, and Scott Manning Stevens. Home Front: Daily Life in the Civil War North. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.