The Addison's collection numbers over 20,000 objects. While the galleries can only accommodate a fraction of the collection, virtually the entire collection is accessible through the Museum Learning Center.

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Collection

Themes: MLC Portfolio: Race and Otherness

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Artist(s): Winslow Homer (Boston, MA, Feb 24, 1836 - Sep 29, 1910, Prout's Neck, Scarboro, ME)
Title: Campaign Sketches.  Our Jolly Cook.
Date: 1863
Dimensions: 11 in. x 8 15/16 in. (27.94 cm x 22.7 cm)
Medium: lithograph on wove paper
Credit Line: Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, museum purchase, 1936.50

This object is a member of the following groups (click any group name to view all objects in that group):

Periods and Styles: Civil Rights Movement
Themes: MLC Portfolio: Race and Otherness
Themes: MLC Portfolio: American Identity
Periods and Styles: MLC Portfolio: Civil War
Artists: Winslow Homer

Object Information

In the summer of 1863, Winslow Homer collaborated with Boston
lithographer Louis Prang on the series “Campaign Sketches,” a portfolio
of six lithographs that included <i>A Pastime</i>, <i>The Baggage Train</i>, and <i>Our
Jolly Cook</i>, which are in the Addison’s collection.

In <i>Our Jolly Cook</i>, a crudely caricaturized African American camp cook
dances to a fifer’s melody for assembled white soldiers. While African
Americans were stereotyped in prints as happy-go-lucky and childlike
buffoons, they performed critical duties for Union troops in the fields,
including cooking, driving mule teams, building roads, and even burying
the dead. By the summer of 1863 they began fighting for the Union in
major battles. After the war, new images of the African Americans as an
independent freedmen and heroic soldiers slowly replaced the previous
stereotypes.

Exhibition History

This object was included in the following exhibitions:

Works by Winslow Homer, Addison Gallery of American Art, 11/16/1973 - 12/16/1973
Winslow Homer, Albert P. Ryder, Thomas Eakins, Addison Gallery of American Art, 12/12/1980 - 1/4/1980
Winslow Homer at the Addison, Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/12/1990 - 7/31/1990
From the Front Line, Addison Gallery of American Art, 1/9/2007 - 4/15/2007
The Civil War: Unfolding Dialogues, Addison Gallery of American Art, 10/15/2011 - 4/15/2012

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