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The Brierwood Pipe
Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910)
1864
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Framed: 68.9 x 64.1 x 9.2 cm (27 1/8 x 25 1/4 x 3 5/8 in.); Unframed: 42.8 x 37.5 cm (16 7/8 x 14 3/4 in.); Former: 69 x 64 x 8 cm (27 3/16 x 25 3/16 x 3 1/8 in.)
- Culture
- United States
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, American Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Created during the United States Civil War, Winslow Homer’s painting depicts two volunteers for the Union Army who sport their regiment’s highly colorful uniforms, a design discovered to be impractical due to its ability to be spotted by sharpshooters. Passing idle time in their encampment, one soldier holds a lit pipe and watches his companion whittle a block of wood. The painting shares its title with a contemporary poem, in which a soldier smokes a brierwood pipe and daydreams of the time when the conflict will end so he can return home. The museum acquired this painting during World War II, and it seems likely that the painting’s subject was viewed as especially significant for its wartime audience.
