Winslow Homer: The Veteran in a New Field (1865)

(Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA)

A painting by the American artist Winslow Homer (1836-1910). A man in a wheat-field. The discarded jacket and canteen in the lower right corner identifies the man as Union soldier. Homer made this painting after the surrender of the Confederate forces, marking the end of the American civil war (1861-1865).  With the war over, the soldier becomes a farmer again. The scythe is also symbolical: as an instrument of Death it represents the ' harvest of the dead during the civil war', now it is used to cut the wheat. Painting from 1865.