Aurelius Battaglia's Senate Caricatures

The Senate Collection holds 84 works on paper by the artist Aurelius Battaglia (1910–1984). A native of Washington, D.C., Battaglia enjoyed a long artistic career as an illustrator, working as a staff artist for the Washington Herald from 1933 to 1935 and producing illustrations for numerous other newspapers and magazines. He specialized in caricature, a form of stylized portraiture with comic overtones that flourished between the two World Wars. His associations with the press likely required him to visit Capitol Hill to observe senators and representatives at work in their respective chambers and hearing rooms.

The Senate's drawings fall into two distinct periods of the artist's career: his early professional period from approximately 1924 to 1937 and mid-career work from the 1950s and '60s. A stylistic shift can be observed between these two periods—with the Art Deco forms and shading in the earlier works being replaced by a more realistic black-and-white style in the later ones. The notations (such as "Not for Sale" and "Used In") and the thumbtack holes found on many of the illustrations indicate that these were likely working drawings submitted for publication.

The drawings from the first period are inventive yet easily recognizable caricatures of public figures observed by Battaglia in the U.S. Capitol and the Senate Office Building (now the Russell Senate Office Building). The 50-plus Senate-related drawings, most from the Depression era, illustrate the diverse personalities of 26 individual U.S. senators and 4 vice presidents. Some drawings depict Senate furnishings, while others showcase easily recognizable symbols of the institution.

Battaglia's mid-century work is represented in the collection by a dozen caricatures from the late 1950s through the 1960s. The subjects illustrated in this period include senators and government officials linked to notable current events such as the 1953 Army-McCarthy hearings and the Vietnam War.

A selection of Battaglia's drawings, organized by date, appears below, with the oldest object listed first.