PolarBear
Major
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2007
- Messages
- 6,706
In my past life before retiring from academia, I taught courses on Winslow Homer at Syracuse University (NY) and Keene State College (NH). My favorite birthday or Christmas gift of toy soldiers is one of the wonderful sets of Wm. Hocker. For my birthday this year I chose set 378 from Bill's American Civil War series which represents the 5th New York (Duryee's) Zouaves who were painted by Homer in 1865 in the painting below Pitching Quoits. It is believed that Homer owned one of their uniforms and kept it in his NY studio as a reference for the painting. Quoits was the old name for the game horseshoes and was one of the ways in which Civil War soldiers broke up the boredom between battles and skirmishes.