Taking the Census
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
28 x 38 in. (71.1 x 96.5 cm)
Classification
Painting
Culture
American
Department
The American Wing
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Diane, Daniel, and Mathew Wolf, in honor of John K. Howat and Lewis I. Sharp, 2006
Accession Number
2006.457
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the cozy domestic world of Francis William Edmonds' *Taking the Census* (1854), an enchanting oil-on-canvas genre painting now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's American Wing. Measuring 28 x 38 inches, this work captures a bustling interior scene where a census taker scribbles notes amid a lively family group—men, women, children, and even infants—highlighting the everyday rhythms of mid-19th-century American life Edmonds, a New York banker and self-taught artist, excelled in such intimate vignettes, drawing inspiration from 17th-century Dutch masters while infusing them wit...
About the Artist
Francis William Edmonds · 1806–1863
Francis William Edmonds, born on November 22, 1806, in Hudson, New York, into a prominent Quaker family as the seventh child of storekeeper and public servant Samuel Edmonds and Lydia Worth Edmonds, displayed remarkable artistic talent from youth. After Quaker schooling and farm work, he entered banking in 1823 as a clerk at the Tradesmen's Bank in New York City under his uncle Gorham Worth, a pat...