To the stilted pictorial history of the Civil War — the stiff studio portraits of men in uniform, the stylized woodblock engravings of the era’s weekly news magazines, the grainy after-battle photos of the dead in the fields and romanticized oil paintings of battles never seen by their artists — we can add these:

A collection of 137 drawings and watercolors made in the moment by an immigrant soldier in the field as the Civil War unfolded around him.

The clash of combat brigades, the rushing and falling of men and horses, the fear and boredom and comedy of encampments…

They are all here, in Adolph Metzner’s artworks.

“What was it like?”

Adolph answers the question with surprising images of unvarnished honesty.

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