Two Studies of a Bugler

Winslow Homer's sketch captures two poses of a Civil War soldier sounding the bugle—a critical figure in camp life and battlefield communication. The rapid, economical line work and overlapping figures demonstrate Homer's skill at rendering military subjects with immediacy and clarity. Homer covered the war as an artist-correspondent, producing drawings for *Harper's Weekly* that established visual conventions for documenting soldiers in action. These studies exemplify the observational method underlying his later oil paintings, where swift notation in the field became refined into finished compositions that defined American Civil War imagery for generations.