Bold, Cautious, True: Walt Whitman and American Art of the Civil War Era

Based on an exhibition of the same name, this substantial book interweaves the art, the poetry, and the political history of a crucial decade in America's past - the 1860s. Written by Kevin Sharp, curator of the exhibition, the book covers Walt Whitman's years of caring for the wounded in Washington military hospitals and includes heartfelt poems he wrote about this experience. Landscapes of the Hudson River School add to the book's many colorful illustrations of paintings, historical photographs, prints, cartoons, and sculpture. A selection of Winslow Homer's paintings, as well as etchings for Harper's Weekly, depict the human side of the Civil War. Sensitive paintings and photographs show Abraham Lincoln through the years, as he takes on the ever increasing burdens of the Presidency. Among the many artists represented are genre painters Eastman Johnson, Enoch Perry Wood, William D. Washington, Thomas Waterman Wood, and Thomas Satterwhite Noble.