War Through Paintings

No matter what time period an image is produced, the compositional elements contributes a lot to what an image has to say. Below, the image I will analyze will be provided. I am going to leave out context and only go over the compositional components of the picture.

This image can be divided up into three parts: the ground, the woods, and the man. On the ground, you can see that the soldier is surrounded by graves; one in front of him, one behind him to the right, and one far off in the distance to his left. The graves are a sybolism of death and from the position the man stands at, we can infer that this means the man is surrounded by death. The ground is brown with very little green. Perhaps the sprouting of green means a shimmer of hope or life.

The woods in this image is very dark and gives off a very gloomy setting. The trees look almost dead; they all have no leaves. Through the trees, though, you can see a little glimpse of the blue horizon which can mean perhaps, a glimpse of light.

The man here is the focal point of the image. From the clothes he is wearing, one can assume he is a soldier. He seems to have no feet or it appears to be hidden/buried underground. The soldier is standing in a position that seems casual, almost. The soldier has an interesting jacket; a little more than half of his jacket looks black. It does not seem like it would be a shadow so it must have a meaning. Another observation I made is that his jacket is unbuttoned in the area of his heart/chest. It looks almost as if the darkness from his heart is engulfing him as a whole.

The image seeems to have a lot of darkness with a contrast of a little bit of light. Perhaps the meaning of this image is the fight between darkness and light.

Works Cited:

Winslow, Homer. Trooper Meditating Beside a Grave. 1865. Photograph. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha.

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