Soldier's Experience

Description Woodville's familiarity with the distinguished collection of Old Master and contemporary paintings assembled by Robert Gilmor, Jr., of Baltimore, is said to have influenced his decision to become an artist. He left his native Baltimore to study at the Düsseldorf Academy and remained abroad most of his brief career. Woodville, however, occasionally returned to Baltimore for family visits and continued to send pictures to New York to be exhibited at the Art Union. Tragically, he died at the early age of 31, a victim of an overdose of drugs. In this scene, a young soldier narrates his experiences to an elderly couple. Above them hangs a leg-of-mutton hat, a musket, and a picture-all allusions to the Revolutionary War. Five years later, the artist developed this composition into Old '76 and Young '48 (Walters 37.2370).

Conservation

Date	Description	Narrative
2/05/1987	Treatment	mounted; re-housed

Exhibitions

• Richard Caton Woodville. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore; Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute- Museum of Art, Utica; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn. 1967-1968.
• American Drawings from the Walters Art Gallery. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. 1987.
• Private Lives: Nineteenth Century American Genre Drawings. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. 1994-1995.
• The American Artist as Painter and Draftsman. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. 2001.
• New Eyes on America: The Genius of Richard Caton Woodville. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; Mint Museum of Art Uptown, Charlotte. 2013.

Provenance William T. or Henry Walters [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.

Inscriptions [Inscription] Front left: R.G.W. May 1844 [spurious]; [Inscription] Below mat: R.C.W. May 1847

Credit Bequest of Henry Walters, 1931