Study for Justice and Mercy, The Kiss of Righteousness and Peace

Daniel Huntington's preparatory drawing presents two allegorical female figures in classical drapery, their poses interlocking in an embrace. The composition employs careful cross-hatching and graphite modeling to define form and fabric, with architectural elements and decorative scrollwork framing the figures in the background. This study demonstrates Huntington's working method for large-scale allegorical paintings—a genre that dominated American academic art in the late nineteenth century. The artist's notation and compositional sketches visible around the central figures reveal his iterative process in developing the final work's design and symbolic arrangement.