Drawings Published in Harper’s

Henry Mosler

19th–Early 20th Century

Drawing depicting men building vehicle at a campsite and English caption.

An illustration for the monthly magazine Harper’s, The Thirty-Second Indiana Regiment (Colonel Willich) Building Pontoons in Kentucky was likely drawn by Henry Mosler during the Civil War. Engravings like these constituted the photojournalism of their day. Before the rise of photography, line drawings were common in magazines and newspapers, providing a source of income for artists.   

Credits

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington DC., 20540. LC-USZ62-124302.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 6.

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Creator Bio

Henry Mosler

1841–1920

The German-born, American-raised painter and printmaker Henry Mosler worked as an artist and correspondent for Harper’s Weekly during the Civil War. In his home city of Cincinnati, he painted the Plum Street Temple (ca. 1866), representing the synagogue of the leading Reform rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, as well as portraits of members of the local Jewish community. Mosler subsequently settled in Paris, where he showed his works in the Salon, the annual art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, from 1878 to 1897. His 1879 entry, Return of the Prodigal Son, was awarded an honorable mention and acquired for the Musée du Luxembourg, making it the first painting by an American artist that the French government purchased.

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