A combat artist and illustrator, Frank Vizetelly was born in London, England and studied in Boulogne, France. He founded the magazine Le Monde Illustre in Europe and having completed the pictorial reporting of Garibaldi's campaign in Sicily and Italy, was sent to America in 1861 by the Illustrated London News to cover the Civil War.

In 1862, he began his war illustrations. Witnessing the first Bull Run, he did a sketch that was published of the fleeing Union troops, which so incensed Secretary of War Stanton that he refused Vizetelly permission to depict Union battle scenes. Undaunted, Vizetelly joined the Southern troops and sent more than 130 drawings back to London.

He was with General Robert E. Lee along the Rapidan and in Richmond and in Fredericksburg, Virginia and remained with the Southern troops including the fleeing party of Jefferson Davis.

He returned to England in 1864, covered the Civil War in Spain in 1868, and was killed in the Sudan of Egypt while depicting battle scenes that were a military disaster for Britain.

His papers including 29 Civil War drawings and three military subjects in Europe are archived in Houghton Library of Harvard College Library, Harvard University

Sources:
Peter Hastings Falk, Editor, Who Was Who in American Art
"Vizetelly, Frank", Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, //oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~hou00067 (Accessed 12/30/2013)