Election Day in Philadelphia
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| Election Day in Philadelphia | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | John Lewis Krimmel |
| Year | 1815 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Movement | Genre painting |
| Dimensions | 41.4 cm × 64.65 cm (16.3 in × 25.45 in) |
| Location | Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library, Winterthur, Delaware, US |
Election Day in Philadelphia is an oil-on-canvas genre painting by American artist John Lewis Krimmel (1786–1821). It was painted in Philadelphia in 1815. Purchased with funds provided by Henry Francis du Pont, the work is held in the permanent collection of the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library. The painting depicts grassroots democratic participation in the early Republic, with a raucous crowd gathered outside Independence Hall to celebrate and engage in electoral politics.
Krimmel painted the scene in 1815 at the encouragement of his friend Alexander Lawson, an engraver who commissioned the painting or purchased it to engrave. Lawson spent two years working on the engraving but for unknown reasons never completed it.[1] In 1887, Lawson's daughter Mary donated the unfinished copperplate to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which made prints based on it. Collector James L. Claghorn donated Krimmel's watercolor version of the painting from 1816 to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in 1873. The Winterthur Museum, using funds offered for this purpose by Henry Francis du Pont, purchased the original painting in 1959, and it has remained in Winterthur's collection ever since.[2]