Understanding History and Society through Images, 1776-1914

Suggested Paintings

The section lists of twenty-five genre paintings, roughly spanning the decades 1850 to 1870, are provided below for use in the classroom. While this list is by no means exhaustive, it provides a wide range of social, political and domestic typed depictions of African-Americans in the years preceding and directly following the Civil War. All paintings are listed in chronological order. Though War News From Mexico was originally painted in 1848, it was widely distributed as an engraving in 1851, thus bringing into the fold of the years the unit considers.

1. Richard Caton Woodville, War News From Mexico, 1848, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art - Woodville depicts a man reading the newspaper on the porch of a local establishment with townspeople surrounding him.

2. Unknown, Slave Market, c. 1850, Carnegie Museum of Art - This painting shows white buyers and sellers pawing at slaves at an auction. The artist of this work is unknown.

3. John Adam Houston, The Fugitive Slave, 1853, Private Collection - A black man crawls toward the brighter light of a new day, clearly having escaped trouble and capture. The remnants of his bed and campfire indicate he has made it through a tumultuous night.

4. William Sidney Mount, The Bone Player, 1856, Boston Museum of Fine Art - A strange portraiture of a black entertainer.

5. John Carlin, After a Long Cruise (Salts Ashore), 1857, Metropolitan Museum of Art - An African-American woman is manhandled by a rowdy bunch of sailors in a port city in the mid-nineteenth century.

6. Eastman Johnson, Negro Life at the South, 1859, New York Historical Society - This painting combines a variety of scenes of urban domestic interaction of African-Americans. It is well documented that Johnson did not paint this from an exact place or location, but rather as a composite of his observation.

7. John Antrobus, Plantation Burial, 1860, Historical New Orleans Collection - Antrobus acts as outside observer capturing this intimate moment. This is one of the first instances where the intimate detail of the lives of African-American in the South is shown through a detached observational lens.

8. Thomas Waterman Wood, A Southern Cornfield, Nashville, Tennessee, 1861, Wood Art Gallery - This very ideological picture shows a white man, presumably the master, working among his African-American slaves. Wood's focus is on depicting what labor in the field looked like, however, his portrayal is not one how things really were, but rather how things ideally could be.

9. Eyre Crowe, Slaves Waiting for Sale: Richmond, Virginia, 1861, Private Collection - Crowe's painting illustrates societal power structures in his depiction of slaves sitting in wait of their fate.

10. Thomas Moran, Slave Hunt, 1862, Philbrook Museum of Art - The eye is drawn to the lower corner of the painting; the hint of blood on the black male's knife is symbolic of the sacrifices he is willing to make for his and his family's freedom.

11. Eastman Johnson, A Ride for Liberty — The Fugitive Slaves, 1862, Brooklyn Museum - Johnson painting this work to garner sympathy of presumably Northern patrons to rally the abolitionist sentiments of the Union.

12. Eastman Johnson, Negro Boy with Flute, 1863, National Academy Museum - Johnson paints a young African-American in a complex posture, alluding perhaps to the spontaneity of youth, but also, more seriously suggesting the potentiality marginalized citizenship this young man will face in a few short years.

13. Winslow Homer, The Bright Side, 1865, Smithsonian Art Museum - Homer was interested in the intersection of the lives of whites and blacks during and after the Civil War. This painting shows three Union soldiers catching a rest on the sunny side of their tent. Some discussion should be devoted to the attitudes about the capability of black people in Homer's work.

14. Winslow Homer, At The Cabin Door, 1866, Newark Museum - An African-American woman stands at the threshold of a home, looking outward. What she is gazing at and how it will affect her is unknown.

15. Frank Buscher, Black Legs of Washington, 1866, Private Collection - Another of Buscher's works showing the leisure time of African-Americans. Buscher strives to paint the reality of the people he observed.

16. Eastman Johnson, Fiddling His Way, 1866, Chrysler Museum of Art - Another depiction of African-American as entertainer. The title suggests that the man depicted is collecting tips for his musical service to finance his travels.

17. Thomas Waterman Wood, American Citizens (to the Polls), 1867, Wood Art Gallery - Four men illustrate the diversity of the men of the United States, upon whom the right to vote has been granted.

18. Theodore Kaufman, On to Liberty, 1867, Metropolitan Museum of Art - Kaufman considers the plight of the women and children, who were emancipated, in this scene that dramatically questioning the future. Many men are absent because they joined the Union forces as they swept through the south, leaving only the females and young babies at home.

19. Frank Buscher, Black Youth Reading Newspaper on a Barrel, 1867, Private Collection - Shows a young boy, feet propped up, looking over a newspaper. A tambourine lays discarded nearby. It would not be unreasonable to question the actual literacy of the young boy and the purpose of his posturing.

20. Frank Buscher, Four Black Marble Players, 1867, Private Collection - Four young boys are in engaged in an average form of youthful entertainment.

21. Frank Buscher, The Volunteer's Return, 1867, Kuntsmuseum Basel - Though dismissed as an outsider, Buscher's observation of the everyday politics of life immediately after the Civil War provides a fresh, seemingly less-biased portrayal. This painting shows his keen ability to observe the political shading of the American Landscape after the Civil War in African-American communities. This painting shows a volunteer regulating two other young men with tales of his time in the service.

22. Thomas Satterwhite Nobel, John Brown's Blessing, 1867, The New York Historical Society - Nobel is known for painting histories related to slavery, this painting include. Here he depicts John Brown, abolitionist, interacting with members of the community on his way to be hanged. Some history of the Trial of John Brown may need to be provided.

23. William Sidney Mount, Dawn of Day, 1867, The Museums of at Stony Brook - A figure sleeps supine with a rooster on his chest. The symbolism of the rooster and a discussion of having dreams (both from sleep and the dreams of aspiration) may be useful here.

24. Frank Buscher, The Song of Mary Blane, 1870, Kuntsmuseum Solothurn - The title is a reference to a minstrel song. Young men and women of various status sit around a singer, implicitly serenading them with the song popular during the period.

25. Thomas Satterwhite Nobel, The Last Sale of the Slaves in St. Louis, 1871, Missouri History Museum - The use of light and placement within this painting demonstrates the artist's ability to direct the viewers attention and make commentary on social interaction through painting.