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Prang's Civil War Pictures: The Complete Battle Chromos of Louis Prang (North's Civil War)

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Given the expanding public interest in the American Civil War that began with the centenary in the 1960s, this book has been a long time coming. Louis Prang's series of chromolithographs are representative of a period in commercial art that he helped to pioneer, and which lasted until the first decade of the twentieth century. With the style established, everything from farm implements to insurance were advertised with heroic scenes from the nation's history. In more recent times it has been almost impossible to see the complete set of pictures outside obscure collections. Editor Harold Holtzer gives interesting insights into Prang, his artists, and their technique.
Prang marketed his prints in much the same way that our contemporary military artists do. Apart from fashionable gallery openings any military history publication will have several advertisements for prints of battle scenes and historical vignettes. Modern painters focus on period accuracy in microscopic detail and brilliant color. Although Prang was concerned with accuracy some small errors found their way into his work. But anyone who studies that period beyond the superficial, must be drawn into these old pictures. By this process we enter the late Victorian parlor of the veteran and his family.
The charm of the lithographs lies in their mood and atmosphere, which was due in part to the lithographic process itself, and also to the impressionistic influences of the 1880s. The quality of southern summer dust predominates throughout the series. Coal and powder smoke combine in operatic storm clouds. Sunset tones provide nostalgic lighting for the memories of a generation's youth that had already passed into legend. It is not only facsinating to see the events that that generation passed through, but also how they remembered them.

Prang's Civil War Pictures gathers the complete battle chromos of Louis Prang under one cover for the first time, creating an outstanding documentation of the original works of art which inspired Prang's prints. Pictures and accompanying background text provide fine insights and descriptions for both newcomers to Prang's works and those with some prior familiarity with Prang, but not his models.