Focus on this artwork and explain the Description.
The statue depicts Andrew Jackson, the general who commanded US forces in the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815, and who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. It was commissioned in May 1847, almost two years after Jackson's death at The Hermitage, his plantation near Nashville, Tennessee, by the Jackson Monument Committee chaired by John Peter Van Ness (who died before the statue was completed). Although Mills had never met Jackson and had also never seen an equestrian statue, his proposal won the commission ahead of Hiram Powers and Robert Mills. Mills taught himself the technical skills to finalize the design and cast the statue.
Jackson's horse at the Battle of New Orleans was named Duke; but Mills modeled the horse from his own horse named Olympus. Mills trained his horse to pose on its haunches. He also borrowed Jackson's uniform from the U.S. Patent Office, where it was being preserved. He completed a plaster model, and he established a new bronze foundry to produce the casting at his studio on 15th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, south of the Treasury Building.  
Mills produced six castings of the statue of Andrew Jackson until the final one was completed, with ten pieces, six for Jackson and four for the horse. In his casting, he was assisted by an enslaved apprentice, Phillip Reid, who also assisted Mills with other castings, including the 1860-1862 casting of the Statue of Freedom designed by Thomas Crawford which sits atop the United States Capitol dome.   The casting was completed 1852, making this the first equestrian statue made in the US, and also the first bronze statue cast in the US. It has been described as the first equestrian statue made with the horse rearing on two legs with no additional support – earlier equestrian bronzes, such as Pietro Tacca's statue of Philip IV, and Étienne Maurice Falconet's statue of Peter the Great, use the horse's tail as a third support. Tests in 1993 showed that the rear legs have central cores of iron covered with bronze, giving them additional strength and weight to support and counterbalance the suspended parts of the statue.
The statue is about a third larger than life, and weighs about 15 tons. It was installed on a tapering rectangular marble base on a raised circular grassed area with railings on the alignment of the North Portico of the White House and 16th Street NW. The narrow face of the marble base, to the west, bears the inscriptions "JACKSON" and "OUR FEDERAL UNION / IT MUST BE PRESERVED", the latter added in 1909 and quoting a toast offered by Jackson at a Democratic Party banquet in 1830 to celebrate the birthday of Thomas Jefferson. The south face has the inscription "CLARK MILLS".The marble base is surrounded by four cannons that Jackson captured from the Spanish at Pensacola, Florida in 1818. The original intention has been to cast the statue itself using metal from captured cannons, but the tin content was too high. The metal barrels of the cannons initially rested on the grass for several years, before they were raised on new wooden gun carriages, subsequently replaced several times.
gun carriage Democratic Party Nashville, Tennessee equestrian statue Treasury Building statue of Philip IV United States Hiram Powers Pensacola, Florida statue of Peter the Great Andrew Jackson White House 16th Street NW Pietro Tacca Robert Mills Pennsylvania Avenue U.S. Patent Office Thomas Jefferson Battle of New Orleans Pennsylvania Avenue NW Étienne Maurice Falconet United States Capitol dome The Hermitage 15th Street Statue of Freedom New Orleans Thomas Crawford United States Capitol John Peter Van Ness