[Interior View of the Ballroom for Lincoln's Second Inaugural Ball]
March 1865
![[Interior View of the Ballroom for Lincoln's Second Inaugural Ball] by Alexander Gardner](https://images.artheonmuseum.org/met/ph/thumb/interior-view-of-the-ballroom-for-lincolns-second-285806.webp)
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions
Image: 6 7/8 × 8 7/8 in. (17.4 × 22.6 cm) Mount: 12 5/16 × 16 3/8 in. (31.2 × 41.6 cm)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Museum Purchase, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.1211
Art Historical Context
Step into the grandeur of 1865 with Alexander Gardner's *Interior View of the Ballroom for's Second Inaugural Ball an evocative albumen silver print captured days after Abraham Lincoln's reelection amid the Civil War's final throes. Gardner, a pioneering Scottish-born photographer renowned for his stark Civil War documentation—including battlefield scenes and portraits of Lincoln—turned his lens to this celebratory interior at Washington's Patent Office. The image reveals a vast, chandelier-lit hall adorned with flags and throngs of elegantly dressed attendees, freezing a fleeting moment of na...
About the Artist
Alexander Gardner
Alexander Gardner was born on 17 October 1821 in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland, and came of age in a culture shaped by radical social thought. Influenced by the cooperative ideals of Robert Owen, Gardner initially apprenticed as a jeweler and harbored dreams of founding a utopian community in America. His encounter with photography changed the course of his life. After seeing Mathew Brady's cele...