Washington Irving and his Literary Friends at Sunnyside

Christian Schussele
Date: 1864
Medium: Mezzotint on paper
Dimensions: 25 1/4 H x 31 W
Credit: Albany Institute of History & Art Purchase, Cogswell Fund
Accession Number: 1997.9.1
Comments: An attractive group portrait of Irving with his literary contemporaries arrayed around him in his study at Sunnyside. From left to right, the figures are: Henry T. Tuckerman, William Gilmore Simms, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Fitz Greene Halleck, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Parker Willis, William H. Prescott, Irving, James K. Paulding, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Cullen Bryant, John P. Kennedy, J. Fennimore Cooper, and George Bancroft. From a shelf on the wall in the upper right of the image, a bust of Shakespeare looks down on this impressive gathering.