James Irvin / designed by William Croome ; the portrait from a daguerreotype by [Marcus] Root & on stone by A[lbert] Newsam ; P.S. Duval, lith., Philadelphia.

An emblematic campaign portrait of former congressman James Irvin, who in 1847 was the Whig candidate for governor of Pennsylvania. The candidate is shown full-length, standing beneath a tree in an open field. On the ground next to him is a plough, a symbol of agriculture also featured prominently on the state's seal. In the landscape beyond Irvin are various symbols of Pennsylvania's industry and progress, including a farmer plowing his field, a mill town with smoking chimneys, a steamboat on a river, and a locomotive. Croome's portrait is based on the type established in John F. Francis's 1838 portrait of Pennsylvania governor Joseph Ritner, likewise reproduced as a print by Newsam for P.S. Duval. Croome reverses Francis's composition and introduces a more modern industrial landscape with steamships and locomotives in the distance. Judith W. Hansen describes a version of the Ritner portrait print where the head is replaced (i.e., redrawn) with that of James Irvin, in the Pattee Library at Pennsylvania State University.
Title from print.
"Entered ... 1847, by P.S. Duval ..."
Hansen, no. 13
Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston : G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1847-10.