The Camp of the Contrabands on the Banks of the Mississippi, Fort Pickering, Memphis, Tenn.
- Creator: Henri Lovie (1829-1875)
- Title: The Camp of the Contrabands on the Banks of the Mississippi, Fort Pickering, Memphis, Tenn.
- Date: 1862
- Description: Busy scene showing African American men seated or lying down in shadowed foreground, soldiers and tents in middle ground and a two-smokestack ship in background against the river on the horizon.
- Historical Note: Henri Lovie was born in Prussia and immigrated to the US, establishing himself in Cincinnati as a portrait painter, landscape artist, designer and illustrator by the 1850s. He taught drawing at Robert Conner's Cincinnati Academy of Design and at Cincinnati Wesleyan Female in Prussia and immigrated to the US and established College and was a member of the Cincinnati Sketch Club along with T. Worthington Whittredge, Robert Scott Duncanson and Henry Mosler. In 1860, Lovie joined Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper as a special artist. Lovie traveled extensively in the South. This illustration was published in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper on November 22, 1862. The text that accompanied it notes that the "national government" had formed this camp for men "rescued from slavery" and that "they are employed in labor about the fort...and paid a pro rata for what they do." Lovie's drawings of the April 1862 Battle of Shiloh scooped competitor Harper's Weekly.However, after being questioned several times by Confederate forces, accused of being a spy, and shot at, he left the business in 1863.
- Institution: American Antiquarian Society
- Publisher: Digital Initiatives, James E. Walker Library, Middle Tennessee State University
- Rights: Images reproduced on this website are intended for individual, educational use only. For research inquiries about specific objects or requests for high resolution images, contact the American Antiquarian Society: reproductions@mwa.org
- URL: http://cdm15838.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/shades
