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Assembling of the Multitude at the Eastern Portico, at the Commencement of the Inauguration Ceremonies

Assembling of the Multitude at the Eastern Portico, at the Commencement of the Inauguration Ceremonies/tiles/collection/1/12872.xml
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Date

1853-03-12

Artist

Christian Schussele

Publisher

Frank Leslie

Dimensions

15 3/8 × 21 3/8 in. (39.1 × 54.3 cm)

Accession Number

2015.001.002

Credit Line

Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives

Object Details

The crowd at Franklin Pierce’s 1853 inauguration on the Capitol’s East Front appears in surging, baroque form in this print from Frank Leslie's early Illustrated News. The artist, Christian Schussele—a well-respected teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts—was known for his highly expressive history and genre paintings. Leslie himself engraved the print block. The gesture and movement of the crowd in this scene, a subject often rendered prosaically in the illustrated weeklies, exemplifies the artist’s flair for figural drama.

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