Majestic Library Interior

George W. Peters
Congressional Library, [1896-1910]
Watercolor on paper.
Cabinet of American Illustration
Prints & Photographs Division
(7A.8)
Digital ID# ppmsca-09898

American illustrator George W. Peters (1866-?) depicts the northwest corridor leading to the Great Hall of the Thomas Jefferson Building in this beautiful watercolor. His passageway vista of vividly patterned vaults, mosaic and marble floors, pilasters and lunettes with paintings of the Muses captures the building's decorative splendor. An accomplished watercolorist who worked for Harper's Weekly during America's golden age of illustration (1870-1930), Peters may have completed this drawing as part of a series published in two 1897 issues of Harper's that document the breathtaking interior spaces of the newly opened "Congressional Library."