- In full:
- Alfred Rudolph Waud
Alfred R. Waud
Alfred R. Waud (born October 2, 1828, London, Englandâdied April 6, 1891, Marietta, Georgia, U.S.) was a British-born American illustrator whose lively and detailed sketches of scenes from the Civil War, which he covered as a press correspondent, captured the warâs dramatic intensity and furnished him with a reputation as one of the preeminent artist-journalists of his era.
Waud studied art in London at the Government School of Design (now the Royal College of Art) and the Royal Academy of Arts before immigrating to the United States in 1850. He briefly worked as an illustrator for the Boston humour magazine The Carpet-Bag and provided drawings for an 1857 guidebook on the area around Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River.
In 1860 Waud became a staff illustrator for the New York Illustrated News. Upon the commencement of civil war the following year, he was dispatched to cover the Army of the Potomac, the main Union military contingent. As a âspecial artistâ for the newspaper, Waud produced a series of quickly rendered but veracious sketches in the fieldâincluding depictions of the First Battle of Bull Runâwhich were then printed as engravings. He remained with the army after joining the staff of Harperâs Weekly magazine at the end of 1861 and went on to sketch scenes of the Battle of Gettysburg, among other significant military actions.
After the war Waud continued to contribute sketches to Harperâs, documenting American life in locales ranging from the Reconstruction-era South to the western frontier. As a freelance illustrator, he contributed work to a number of publications, including the popular, copiously illustrated Picturesque America (1872â74), edited by William Cullen Bryant.