The image shows a bird's-eye view of a pastoral community with a central large building complex surrounded by lush greenery and small structures. The horizon is high, displaying rolling hills and a light-filled sky. The brushstrokes are detailed, highlighting symmetrical trees, fields, and buildings. The color palette includes greens, reds, browns, and soft blues, accented by white picket fences and an American flag. Horse-drawn carriages and small figures are visible, and smoke rises from a chimney in the distance. Vignettes around the border show additional buildings and scenes linked to the community.

Berks County Almshouse, 1895

Louis Mader

The image shows a bird's-eye view of a pastoral community with a central large building complex surrounded by lush greenery and small structures. The horizon is high, displaying rolling hills and a light-filled sky. The brushstrokes are detailed, highlighting symmetrical trees, fields, and buildings. The color palette includes greens, reds, browns, and soft blues, accented by white picket fences and an American flag. Horse-drawn carriages and small figures are visible, and smoke rises from a chimney in the distance. Vignettes around the border show additional buildings and scenes linked to the community.

Colors in this work

Details
Artist
Louis Mader
Date
1895
Medium
oil on metal
Dimensions
overall: 82.9 x 100.7 cm (32 5/8 x 39 5/8 in.) framed: 95.2 x 113.5 x 4.7 cm (37 1/2 x 44 11/16 x 1 7/8 in.)
Department
CAB
Holding institution
National Gallery of Art
Palette

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Image provider
national-gallery-of-art
License
CC0-1.0
Credit
Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch

Art Genome Taxonomy

11 tags

Subject Matter

  • Landscapes Both · 98%

    The composition depicts rolling hills, cultivated fields, wooded areas, gardens, and a broad sky surrounding the settlement.

  • Rural Life Visual · 97%

    Fenced fields, orchards, gardens, livestock, farm structures, roads, and small figures depict organized rural community life.

  • Modes of Transportation Visual · 98%

    Multiple horse-drawn carriages and wagons appear on roads and near the buildings.

  • Text Visual · 99%

    A prominent painted inscription at the bottom identifies the Berks County Almshouse, gives the year 1895, and lists directors and officers.

Visual Qualities

  • Highly Detailed Visual · 99%

    The image contains numerous small buildings, fences, trees, gardens, animals, figures, vehicles, and landscape details across the main panorama and surrounding vignettes.

  • Bright and Vivid Colors Visual · 96%

    The painting uses saturated greens, reds, ochres, blues, and white architectural and fence details, with strong gold and dark-brown borders.

Medium and Techniques

  • Painting Metadata · 99%

    The National Gallery of Art classifies the work as a painting.

  • Oil Painting Metadata · 99%

    The catalog explicitly identifies the medium as oil on metal.

Time Periods

Geographic Regions

  • American Art Both · 98%

    The title identifies Berks County, and the image includes an American flag, rural American architecture, and horse-drawn vehicles consistent with the work’s American setting.

Materials

  • Metal Metadata · 99%

    The catalog specifies metal as the support in the medium description, “oil on metal.”

Source & rights

Louis Mader. Berks County Almshouse, 1895. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

High-resolution sources

Catalog record ↗ Image source ↗ Image license ↗ Image-use terms ↗ Catalog metadata terms ↗

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