Group portrait in an outdoor setting, probably the Junger Maennerchor annual picnic and summer night's festival at Schützen Park, depicting hundreds of members (several with their faces likely based after photographs) of the German-American choral society founded in 1852. The massive crowd of white men sit, stand, drink beer, and smoke cigars and pipes. In the left foreground, a number of men hold sheets of music, with one, seated, and in the gesture of conducting across from another seated men leaning on a bound volume resting on a stack of bound volumes of likely music. Also shows a man in the right foreground pouring beer from a keg, and in the center background, two men on horseback, a man holding the society flag, and a man holding a trophy and gesturing toward another man. In the far background, pavilions, several trees, and a partially obscured building is visible. The men are attired in shirt sleeves or suits with ties. Some also wear hats or their hats rest beside them on the ground or they hold walking sticks. By the mid-1870s, German-Americans had formed 24 singing societies in Philadelphia., Not in Wainwright., Includes pictorial detail of an eagle with a lyre and a banner reading "Junger Maennerchor" within the title text between the words "Maennerchor" and "Philadelphia.", Title and date from item., Gift of David Doret., Philadelphia on Stone, POSP 299
Creator
Ch. P. & A. J. Tholey, artist
Date
[1868]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department Doret and Mitchell Collection - Prints [P.2020.39.11]