In the Land of Promise, Castle Garden

Charles Frederic Ulrich

National Gallery of Art

About two dozen men, women, children, and a baby sit in rows of wooden benches or on traveling trunks in this horizontal painting. Their skin is mostly pale with some ranging more toward pink and others toward tan. A woman nursing a baby sits in the center of the composition. Her blond hair is pulled back, and she wears a white blouse under a red vest and a long black skirt. Her shirt is pulled down to expose one breast, and the feeding baby wears a white bonnet and clothing, and is wrapped in a gray-patterned blanket. The woman sits on a wooden trunk in front of a young girl, who sits on a second chest just behind her and to our left. This girl has strawberry blond hair held back under a black headband, and she wears a blue shawl over a brick-red dress. Three silver pans, a silver jug, a glass bottle, and tin cup sit next to her trunk. She leans forward and looks intently off to our left. A man with a red beard wears glasses, a brown suit, and a flat-topped straw hat sits farther back in the room on the far side of bulging sacks and more trunks. He looks into the distance off to our right. Three men wearing black suits and two wearing black bowler hats sit facing each other just over this man’s shoulder. In the right two-thirds of the painting, more men wear fedoras, bowler hats, or brimless caps. Their clothing ranges from vests over button-down shirts to suits and ties. Some wear overcoats, and some are bearded. One man wears a military-style hat, a double-breasted black coat, and smokes a pipe with a white bowl. He looks toward the nursing woman, as does a standing man farther in the room. The men sit alone or chat in groups of two or three, and one sleeps, propped up against a fabric bag. A few more women are among the group, including one older woman who wears a yellow scarf tied over her head to the left. A sign hanging on a column behind the nursing woman begins with the text, “Emigrant Landing Depot” over columns of fine print. The walls of the room are mottled fog and cream white, and one visible window is small within the thick wall. The floor is wooden planks and there is a brown stain near the lower right corner.