Popular music of the war-era was often first introduced to the public through piano sheet music intended for performance in a home parlor. In this lithographed cover illustration for J.C. Viereck's patriotic "Monterey, A Military Rondino," a family gathers around the piano to listen or sing along -- perhaps reminded of a loved one or friend serving their country in far away Mexico. The celebrated portraitist and lithographic artist Albert Newsam was a deaf mute who worked for P.S. Duval in Philadelphia. See Wendy Wick Reeves, "Portraits for Every Parlor: Albert Newsam and American Portrait Lithography," in American Portrait Prints: Proceedings of the Tenth Annual American Print Conference (Charlottesville: Univ. of Va. Press, 1984), pp. 83-134.
