Reception of General Louis Kossuth at New York City, December 6, 1851
1851
E. Percel (active c. 1850)
Oil on canvas, 44 X 63 1/2
Gift of Colonel Edgar William and Mrs. Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 66.2

Beginning in the late eighteenth century, New York City became a favored backdrop for public celebrations in the form of parades honoring individuals and events of civic, and even national, interest. As the city established parks and squares, which in turn became venues for commemorative sculpture and arches, Manhattan provided an ideal setting for these "civic performances."¹

Lajos (Louis) Kossuth, leader of a short-lived Hungarian rebellion in 1848, arrived in the United States in 1851 for a triumphal tour that would raise money for the cause of Hungarian independence. In this painting Kossuth is represented as the figure in a beaver hat and riding a white horse in the parade that followed his landing at the Battery on December 6, 1851. In addition to the parade depicted here, Kossuth was welcomed to New York with a monumental torchlight parade, a municipal dinner, banquets, and rounds of receptions. His popularity was so great that fashionable young men began to wear wide-brimmed, soft felt hats in imitation of his.² In 1928 the city's Hungarian community erected a statue memorializing him. Several American cities have been named after Kossuth.³

Notes:

 1  See Brooks McNamara, Day of Jubilee (Rutgers: Rutgers University Press, 1997), for a full discussion of how theatrical traditions were adapted for these street events, which used the city as both stage and auditorium.

  2  Kenneth T. Jackson, ed., The Encyclopedia of New York City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 643.

  3  There are Kossuths in Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas.