Washington Irving and his Literary Friends at Sunnyside

About this artwork

This imaginary scene shows fifteen celebrated literary figures gathered at the home of Washington Irving, author of such popular tales as “Rip Van Winkle” (1819) and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820). Advertisements published in the New York Times in December 1863 announced the painting’s exhibition at a Manhattan art gallery, where visitors could purchase a fifty-four-page booklet describing the work. “It is, in the truest and completest sense, a National picture,” the anonymou...