Who is Winslow Homer?
Mr. HUGHES: We–Winslow Homer was a–well, he’s a man about whose character not a hell of a lot is known because he–his four favorite words, according to such friends as he had, were `mind your own business.’ And the–he started off painting–or, rather, drawing reportage of the Civil War in the 18–you know, he–he–he was there at the front in the 1860–in the early 1860s. This picture here, “A Veteran in a New Field,” is probably, I think, the most moving, the–the least direct of all pictures to do with the Civil War. I mean, the man is a veteran who’s come back, he’s mowing the wheat, but it also alludes to the terrible massacres of Antietam and Gettysburg, you know, which took place in wheat fields. “Prisoners From the Front,” young Union–youngish Union officer surveying these four–these three prisoners. You know, there’s this little–there’s this hellfire Kentuckian or Virginian in the front, you know, looking as mean as hell, sort of–he’s got a face like McVeigh. There’s a-
