Illustration feature: ‘Politics in an Oyster House, a modernist recreation’

This work recreates Richard Caton Woodville’s 1848 painting, “Politics in an Oyster House” with a modernist approach. The original painting was a response to the 1840s Young America movement, which called on young people to be more inventive in the arts and to take the lead in American culture. The painting depicts an older man looking half-weary, half-amused at his younger friend’s political passion, a familiar and humorous sentiment common in antebellum genre paintings.