Stereoviews serve as visual documents of the ever-evolving arrangement of objects within the Capitol. This view, which focused on a plaster statue of Abraham Lincoln by Henry Ellicott, also shows a temporary arrangement of wall-hung works in the Capitol’s Rotunda. Artists often exhibited art in the Capitol, usually with an aim of selling the work. The large painting over the doorway, Washington and Lafayette at Mount Vernon, 1784 by Thomas Pritchard Rossiter and Louis Remy Mignot, is one example. The work ultimately made its way to the collection of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
