Cornelia Adele Strong Fassett (November 9, 1831-January 4, 1898) was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

, best remembered for her political portraits. Her most famous work is her painting of the Electoral Commission of 1877.

Born in Owasco, New York

Owasco, New York

Owasco is a town in Cayuga County, New York, United States. The population was 3,793 at the 2010 census.The Town of Owasco is in the eastern part of Cayuga County and is at the southeast city line of Auburn, New York. The town borders Owasco Lake, from where it gets its name...

, she studied in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, studying watercolor painting with J.B. Wandesforde, an English artist, then three years in both Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 and Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 studying under Giuseppe Castiglione, Henri Fantin La Tour, and Lambert Joseph Matthew. After an early career in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Fassett and her husband, Samuel Montague Fassett, moved to Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

, in 1875, where she painted successful documentary portraits of notable government figures and he was photographer to the Supervising Architect of the Treasury. A year after their move, her 1876 group portrait of the Supreme Court justices was exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. It is now in the collection of the Supreme Court of the United States, along with her portrait of Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite.

The Florida Case Before the Electoral Commission

The Florida Case Before the Electoral Commission is a massive historical painting by Fassett depicting many figures at an Electoral Commission's meeting in relation to the disputed U.S. presidential election of 1876. During the summers of 1877 and 1878, she was permitted to set up a temporary studio in the U.S. Capitol’s Supreme Court Chamber while the Court was not in session. Her aim though was to paint a group portrait of the Electoral Commission’s 1877 meeting in the room. However, the federal government did not commission the painting; Fassett created it independently. That she had to wait seven years before Congress agreed to buy it for $7,500 (much less than her original asking price), and endure public criticism of the painting from newspapers, as well as from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is a museum and art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1805 and is the oldest art museum and school in the United States. The academy's museum is internationally known for its collections of 19th and 20th century American paintings,...

, attests to her determination and endurance. Fassett was a competent painter of miniature portraits and her painting was admired for its realism, but to some, the painting appeared rather stilted compositionally.

Fassett’s painting has one significant precedent in American art: Samuel F.B. Morse’s The Old House of Representatives, completed in 1822. That much larger painting shows a similar space, the House Chamber, from the same viewpoint as later selected by Fassett: the left side of the room and slightly above the head level of those on the main floor. Fassett certainly knew Morse’s painting, because it had recently (1874) been displayed at the Corcoran Gallery of Art

Corcoran Gallery of Art

The Corcoran Gallery of Art is the largest privately supported cultural institution in Washington, DC. The museum's main focus is American art. The permanent collection includes works by Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Thomas Gainsborough, John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet, Pablo...

 in Washington, D.C. The Morse painting is the masterwork of an excellently trained artist, deft at handling complicated perspective constructions and large groups of figures. Where Morse’s figures form subgroups around a central focus, Fassett crowds most of her figures into receding rows. Even the face meant to attract our attention, William M. Evarts

William M. Evarts

William Maxwell Evarts was an American lawyer and statesman who served as U.S. Secretary of State, U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator from New York...

, counsel for Hayes, is nearly lost standing amid a sea of faces.

Fassett includes nearly three times as many figures as Morse into a much smaller architectural space, and does so on a much smaller canvas. But Fassett includes virtually every person who was relevant to the political crisis, as well as other prominent figures in the capital city. James G. Blaine

James G. Blaine

James Gillespie Blaine was a U.S. Representative, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, U.S. Senator from Maine, two-time Secretary of State...

, for instance, who had unexpectedly lost the Republican nomination to Hayes, appears at the lower foreground of the picture (below the standing Evarts), his handsome face turned to the viewer. Also present is the banker and art collector William Wilson Corcoran

William Wilson Corcoran

William Wilson Corcoran was an American banker, philanthropist, and art collector.-Early life:Corcoran was born in Georgetown in the District of Columbia, the son of a well-to-do father whom the electors of Georgetown twice chose as mayor. His father, Thomas Corcoran, came to Georgetown in 1788...

, seen in the row just below the commissioners, fourth from the left. Fassett took some artistic license–-not all of the individuals depicted attended the hearings. Some of the faces were based on existing photographic portraits by Mathew Brady

Mathew Brady

Mathew B. Brady was one of the most celebrated 19th century American photographers, best known for his portraits of celebrities and his documentation of the American Civil War...

. Several of these relevant Brady photographs survive, including one of Fassett herself.

Among the 256 persons in Fassett’s painting, more than 60 are women. Some are wives or daughters of political figures; others are professionals. Fassett included 17 female journalists in the press gallery and at least one painter in addition to herself on the main floor, Imogene Robinson Morrell. Fassett, in front (right of center), holds her sketchbook, in which she has drawn Evarts’s head.

One of the most prominent professional women in Washington, D.C., at the time was the writer Mary Clemmer Ames. Ames sits in the lower right corner of the painting, looking at the viewer, immediately below the great Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing...

, champion of African American equality. Fassett clearly introduced her own concerns into this document, enlarging its record as a turning point in American political life.

See also

• Samuel F.B. Morse’s The Old House of Representatives