(upbeat piano music)
- [Beth] We're in the American galleries
at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,
and we're looking at a really interesting painting
by Winslow Homer called "Army Teamsters," 1866.
So this is painted just after the end of the Civil War,
but Homer spent quite a bit of time painting
and making prints showing the war to a Northern audience.
- [Christopher] In Homer's travels with the Union Army,
he became acquainted with the everyday aspects
of this huge operation that required the moving
of so many men, goods, arms, and so in "Army Teamsters,"
we see five men who are presumably taking a moment off
from their main role in moving the Union Army.
- [Beth] In art history, when we think about
paintings of war time, we think about battle scenes
or depictions of heroic victory or heroic death,
but here we have a very everyday scene
which Homer would have witnessed, and these are the men
who are driving the wagons that we see in the background.
- [Christopher] For him, it was that interest
in the humanity of all of these different people
with the army, and recognizing their hard work.
The four men who are leaning against the tent
are those that who are absolutely exhausted
from having moved these wagons and mules.
Now, the mules themselves, all looking quite bedraggled,
show the amount of work that has just occurred.
- [Beth] And we know that the issue
of black people serving in the Union Army
was a contentious one.
- [Christopher] So the Union Army did train and arm
many black Americans, but also men like these
might've been swept up into the Union Army
as they went through especially Southern states
and they flocked to their freedom to the Union Army,
where they could be enlisted or at least provided
with the daily requirements of life.
through this very arduous labor.
- [Beth] During the Civil War,
enslaved people who make their way to the Union Army,
who make their way north, don't have to be returned
as property to their owners, but can be kept
as what was called contraband of war.
And contraband is a difficult term to use
to talk about human beings. - Yeah, absolutely.
- [Beth] And so, one term that we used instead is refugees.
These figures who fled north,
who want to serve in the Union Army
and are often put in the role of Teamsters,
of driving mule trains.
- [Christopher] They are self-emancipating
and they are trying to make the best
of their lives through continued hard labor.
These figures don't seem to rely on caricature.
We have Homer's original sketches
that are presumably based on five people,
and I think he's recognizing them
as fellow participants in this cataclysmic war.
- [Beth] And in fact, when we compare Homer's figures
to illustrations in Harpers, there's one in particular
of Teamsters who were being paid
where the black figures are very caricatured.
We clearly see that that's not what Homer is doing here.
Nevertheless, a scene of black figures
relaxing in the sunshine did bring to mind
stereotyped images of enslaved people as lazy.
- [Christopher] Critics and viewers were responding to that.
There is a decades-long visual history of precisely that,
the black body in a moment of relaxation asleep in the sun,
something akin to what we see here.
- [Beth] And for Homer, this interest in this lovely
late afternoon light where the figures are casting
long shadows on the tent behind them.
- [Christopher] Perhaps there's a coolness setting in
and capturing those last moments of warm sunlight
is important to these men.
- [Beth] And "The Bright Side,"
perhaps alluding to the future of these men,
a future that's brighter than enslavement.
- [Christopher] Homer sees that
as looking towards what's coming.
- [Beth] Let's talk for a minute about the figure
who is sticking his head out from the tent,
and who's the only figure who seems to be engaging with us.
- [Christopher] Critics did respond to his expression.
His emerging from the tent is wholly playing into
preexisting stereotypes and caricatures
of the comic black figure that you could see
in places like popular illustration,
but also the minstrel stage.
But what's interesting is the grin or smirk
that were often ascribed to him
in contemporary printed reviews
doesn't seem to be apparent in the actual painting itself.
- [Beth] We have four figures here,
one of whom's torso and head are almost completely
eclipsed by the figure in the foreground.
- [Christopher] So the Figure in the foreground,
who's holding a whip, seems to be blocking the view
of a man who's wearing a blue Union Army kepi cap,
something that would have been given
to the enlisted soldiers.
- [Beth] It's impossible not to read the whip,
which would have been used to drive the mule train,
also as a instrument of punishment for enslaved people.
- [Christopher] This object was previously
used for punishment.
It can now drive one forward into a new stage in life.
- [Beth] Because Homer is embedded with the Union troops,
we get this view into the everyday life of the Union Army
and the role that formerly enslaved people could play
serving the Union effort.
- [Christopher] for Homer and many of his colleagues,
he would have seen this as a positive element,
being able to offer these men freedom, labor, housing, food,
all in the continued effort to win the war
and be done with slavery once and for all.
(upbeat piano music)