We look across a cavernous room with a half-domed ceiling where more than a hundred men are gathered at desks and theater-like boxes in this horizontal painting. Almost all of the men have pale, peachy skin and wear black suits with white high-pointed collars. The desks curve in a half-circle facing our left, where two candelabras sit on a dais, a canopied space with polished columns. Seven more columns lining the rounded space are also speckled with fawn brown, bronze, copper, and muted moss green. They have white capitals carved with leaves ands scrolls. Crimson-red curtains hung between…
Gallery mode Full size at the museum

Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.

The House of Representatives

painter Samuel F. B. Morse (American, 1791 - 1872)

1822, probably reworked 1823

Medium
oil on canvas
Classification
Painting
Dimensions
overall: 220.7 × 331.8 cm (86 7/8 × 130 5/8 in.) ; framed: 256.5 × 363.2 × 10.5 cm (101 × 143 × 4 1/8 in.)
Culture
American
Museum
National Gallery of Art, CAB
Credit line
Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund, 1911)
Rights
Public domain (NGA Open Access, CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed

View at the National Gallery of Art

More by Samuel F. B. Morse

See all

More like this

See all