The Brush Harrow

What is the role of art in a time of national mourning? "The Brush Harrow"—one of Homer’s poignant elegies to lives and communities affected by the U.S. Civil War—engages this question. In the 1860s, a brush harrow was an already outmoded tool, using logs and branches to clear a field for the springtime planting. Homer subtly renders the war’s human, socioeconomic, and environmental impact in this metaphorical scene of young children and an aged war horse laboring with imperfect tools in the stead of absent adults. As a freelance illustrator for various New York periodicals and a war correspondent for "Harper’s Weekly," Homer knew that personal stories and measured compositions were effective ways to frame national events. When the painting debuted at the 1866 exhibition of the National Academy of Design, various contemporary critics noted how the restrained figuration, palette, and scale amplified the power of the work.