Arthur Lumley was born in Dublin, Ireland and came to the United States around 1840 where he lived in Brooklyn. In the 1850s, he studied art at the National Academy of Design and supported himself by doing illustrations for books as well as for the newly founded illustrated newspapers New York Illustrated, Harper’s Weekly, and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.

In April 1861, Frank Leslie sent Lumley to Washington D.C. as a “special artist” to accompany General Irwin McDowell’s army as it traveled south into Virginia where it engaged the Confederate forces at Bull Run Creek. Lumley sketched large panoramic drawings of the Federal Army in its initially successful attack and did close-up studies of the bayonet charge of the New York City Fire Zoaves.

When Confederate reinforcements counterattacked and broke the Federal assault, Lumley vividly captured the resulting panic as the Union Army retreated to Washington. In 1862, he went to work for New York Illustrated. In all, Leslie’s and New York Illustrated published 298 of Lumley’s wartime drawings. He also contributed drawings of social satire to The Daily Graphic, which was established in the early 1870s as the first illustrated daily newspaper in the United States.