Richard Caton Woodville: American Painter, Artful Dodger

This book is the first to examine the life and work of Richard Caton Woodville (1825-1855), an antebellum genre painter and shrewd observer of urban society and politics. Before Woodville died at thirty, he produced a small body of work that includes such iconic pieces as Politics in an Oyster House (1848) and War News from Mexico (1848). In lively prose complemented by vivid illustrations, Justin Wolff presents all the available information on the elusive Woodville and perceptively analyzes practically every work of art he produced. In doing so, Wolff shows that Woodville's paintings engaged their moment in history in surprisingly complex ways.