The Graphic War John G. Keyser, Artist Soldier for the 24th N.J.
By Salvatore Cilella · Originally published November-December 2025 · pp. 52–55
The Graphic War John G. Keyser Artist Soldier for the 24th New Jersey The Graphic War highlights prints and printmakers from the Civil War discussing their meaning and the printmaker or artist’s goals.
In our journey to understand the Civil War, we have devoted many columns to the artist-soldier (or the soldier artist). It seems as if in many more regiments and companies than not, there was at least one artist/soldier who captured the history of his band of brothers through depictions of the regiment’s camp and hospital experiences. Perhaps the best known was Alfred E. Mathews who, after the war, established himself as a chronicler of the western migration. During the war, Mathews drew the attention of none other than Ulysees Grant who recommended him for the position of topographical artist for the army. During Grant’s campaign against the fortified city of Vicksburg the year before, Mathews captured the intensity of the siege with excruciating detail. According to Americana print dealer, Graham Arader, “In 1864, Mathews painted a panorama of the war in the deep South and exhibited throughout the North. Mathews did not attempt to add descriptive text to his images, preferring to let them speak for themselves. As he once noted, ‘a simple sketch will often convey a better idea of a locality than lengthy descriptions…’ Mathews realized that a picture was worth a thousand words, so to speak, and his postwar vivid images of the stunning Colorado scenery captivated the American public.”1 On the other end of the spectrum was Private John G. Keyser. Well known in his hometown as an artist, he, unlike Mathews, remained close to his home in Bridgeton, New Jersey. His work remained largely focused on his war experiences. Thanks to the Cumberland County Historical Society in Greenwich, New Jersey, Keyser has not been lost to the historical record. Like so many artist-soldiers and volunteers in the Union Army, Keyser was an immigrant. Born in Oberstenfeld, Germany, in 1827, he emigrated to Philadelphia in 1847 from London. In 1856, he moved to
Bridgeton, New Jersey. According to the 1860 census, he was listed as a tailor, although he was also practicing his artistic skills. An 1879-80 advertisement for Keyser’s paint shop indicated its establishment in 1858.2 When war broke out, Keyser enlisted on September 2, 1862, in Company H, 24th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry Regiment. The 24th New Jersey left the state on September 30. A nine-month unit, it was engaged in the intense fighting at Fredericksburg in December 1862 and Chancellorsville in May 1863. Most of the regiment’s time was spent in Virginia (Fig. 1) where Keyser recorded the unit’s marches, camps, battles, and men. In thirteen separate scenes, Keyser depicted the barracks at Beverly N.J.; U.S. Vol. Refreshment Saloon, Philadelphia; the regiment’s encampment in Baltimore; Camp Ingham East Capitol Hill; Camp Nixon, Chainbridge, Va.; Camp at Aquia Creek; pickets near Langley’s, Va. (two views); Camp Kearney, Fort Marcy, Va.; pickets near Fairfax Co., Va.; Camp Cumberland, Va.; Camp Knight, Va.; and the Lacy House near Fredericksburg, Va. The title margin reveals that the lithograph was produced from “sketches taken on the spot by J. G. Keyser, Bridgeton, N. J.” His rendition of the carnage at Marye’s Heights at Fredericksburg is particularly vivid, showing the charge of General Nathan Kimball’s Brigade., officially the 1st Brigade, 3rd Division, II Corps, Army of the Potomac. (Fig. 2). In addition to the 24th, the brigade consisted of the 4th and 8th Ohio, 14th Indiana, 7th Virginia, and the 28th New Jersey. Kimball, a native of Fredericksburg, Indiana, suffered a painful thigh wound, losing 25 percent of his command in the charge.3 After his muster out, Keyser returned to Bridgeton, where he continued to work as a painter. He returned to Europe, where he sold sketches of the battles of Fredericksburg
and Chancellorsville and the 24th regiment’s various encampments. “Although he planned on staying only a year before returning to the United States, Keyser fell ill in Germany and died there on February 11, 1902.”4 His return to his native country explains the production of his “Campains” [sic] lithograph which shows camp life in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia. (Fig. 1) The lithographer was Carl Kolbe of Stuttgart, a German romantic painter and engraver and the printer, J. C. Hensler. The printer also worked in Stuttgart between 1862 and 1870.
The print depicting the charge on Marye’s Heights was lithographed in America by French-born artist Peter S. Duval, a renowned Philadelphia figure in mid-19th-century printmaking. He worked for other well-known artists such as Childs & Inman, William Lehman, and William H. Huddy, and was famous for his military magazine and prints.
Today, Keyser’s works are preserved by the Cumberland County Historical Society in Greenwich, New Jersey, in six boxes of sketches and documents. The entire collection “consists of sketches and paintings created by…Keyser dated September 1862 to December 1863 and two sketchbooks, one dated November 1862 and the other from March 1863. Individual sketches comprise…fifty-seven physical pages of sketches, five physical pages of paintings.” Although Keyser is not as well-known as other “soldier-artists,” he escaped the anonymity to which the others succumbed. Endnotes: 1.
Graham Arader, https://aradergalleries.com/products/ alfred-e-mathews-1831-1874-nevada-colorado?pos=1& sid=457218774&_ss=r The Warren and Reba Lummis Genealogical & Historical Research
Figure 1. “Campain [sic] Sketches” by John G. Keyser. (Library of Congress)
Library, Cumberland County Historical Society. Greenwich, NJ. Hereafter, Lummus Collection. https://warren-and-reba-lummisresearch-library.org/civil-war-sketches-collection. W. Andrew Boyd, Boyd’s Cumberland County Directory, For 1879–1880 a Complete Directory of the Cities of Bridgeton, Millville & Vineland, …With an Appendix of The Cities, (Wilmington: James & Webb, 1879), p. 64; New Jersey Census Record 1860; John G. Keyser, “Form for Naturalized Citizen,” (October 9, 1891), Passport Application, National Archives and Records Administration. The Union Army, Volume III, pp. 57-58. “He Loved His Adopted Country, Reminiscences of John G. Keyser, Our Former Citizen. Artist, Soldier and Patriot”, Bridgeton Evening News, March 5,1902 (Bridgeton, 1902). George Nixon ed., “Keyser’s Campaign Sketches of the 24th Regiment N.J. Volunteers” in The Bridgeton Chronicle, (Bridgeton: March 28, 1868).
After 43 years in the museum field, Cilella devotes
his time to collecting A merican prints and maps and
writing. He has written extensively on Emory Upton:
Upton’s Regulars: A History of the 121st New York Volunteers in the Civil War (Kansas, 2009); a twovolume Correspondence of Major General Emory Upton, (Tennessee, 2017), received the 2017–2018 American Civil War Museum’s Founders Award for outstanding editing of primary source materials. He edited Upton’s love letters 1868-70 to his wife–Till Death Do Us Part (Oklahoma, 2020), and The Memoirs of Dewitt Clinton Beckwith of Upton’s Regulars (McFarland, 2023).
Figure 2. “Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862.” (Smithsonian Museum of American History)
J&J Military Antiques
Buying and Selling Original Rev. War – WWII Guns, Swords, Bayonets, Molds, Flasks, Tools and Accoutrements. Specializing in all Civil War Union & Confederate Artifacts.
PO Box 18 • Mt. Bethel, PA 18343 • Phone: 610-599-0766 Email: [email protected]
WALLACE MARKERT
[email protected] 16905 Nash Road • Dewitt, Virginia 23840 804-536-6413 | www.csacquisitions.com
Greg Ton
Buying the Finest in Confederate, Obsolete and Southern States Currency
Since 1978
GregTonCurrency.com
Greg Ton • Franklin, Tennessee Phone: 901-487-5944 • Email: [email protected]
Photographs from the Original Article
Captions and credits appear in the article text as originally printed.