PORTLAND – The Portland Museum of Art will feature the war-related imagery of American artist Winslow Homer in a new exhibit marking the sesquicentennial of the Civil War.

The exhibit, which will run from Sept. 7 through Dec. 8, includes 30 Winslow wood engravings and other prints drawn from the museum’s permanent collection. It’s part of a special series of displays around the state that’s being organized by the Maine Civil War Trail Project.

Winslow Homer made several trips to the Union front in Virginia in 1861 and 1862. The resulting  illustrations of daily life in a Civil War camp and the experiences of soldiers appeared in Harper’s Weekly and other popular national magazines of the 1860s.

“Winslow Homer’s Civil War” will include the artist’s take on African-Americans and the war, women’s war efforts and post-war life.

Homer’s well-known Civil War painting “The Sharpshooter on Picket Duty” (1862) will also be a part of the exhibit beginning Sept. 20, after it has returned from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

In conjunction with the exhibit, Peter H. Wood, a professor emeritus in history at Duke University and author of “Near Andersonville: Winslow Homer’s Civil War,” will speak at 6 p.m. Sept. 26 in the Bernard Osher Foundation Auditorium at the Portland Museum of Art. Admission is $15, or $10 for museum members.

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