From Richmond

Winslow Homer's sketch depicts two Union soldiers during the American Civil War, rendered in watercolor and ink with characteristic economy of line. The figure on the left wears officer's insignia and a decorative sash; his companion carries a walking stick. Homer served as a special artist-correspondent for *Harper's Weekly*, documenting the war through field sketches that were later engraved for mass publication. These journalistic illustrations established visual conventions for war reporting and helped pioneer the sequential narrative techniques foundational to American comics: discrete compositional moments, careful attention to uniform detail, and psychological observation of figures in space. Homer's work influenced generations of newspaper artists developing the visual language of panel, gesture, and character that would define the medium.