The Lord Is My Shepherd
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Object Details
- Artist
- Eastman Johnson, born Lovell, ME 1824-died New York City 1906
- Gallery Label
- Eastman Johnson painted The Lord Is My Shepherd only months after the Emancipation Proclamation of New Year's Day, 1863. The image of a humble black man reading from his Bible was reassuring to white Americans uncertain of what to expect from the freed slaves. But the simple act of reading was itself a political issue. Emancipation meant that blacks must educate themselves in order to be productive, responsible citizens. In the slaveholding South, teaching a black person to read had been a crime; in the North, the issue was not "May they read?" but "They must read."Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006
- Credit Line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Francis P. Garvan
- 1863
- Object number
- 1979.5.13
- Restrictions & Rights
- CC0
- Type
- Painting
- Medium
- oil on fiberboard
- Dimensions
- 16 5/8 x 13 1/8 in. (42.3 x 33.2 cm.)
- See more items in
- Smithsonian American Art Museum Collection
- Department
- Painting and Sculpture
- On View
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2nd Floor, East Wing
- Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Topic
- Figure male
- African American
- Recreation\leisure\reading
- Religion\Christianity
- Record ID
- saam_1979.5.13
- Metadata Usage (text)
- CC0
- GUID (Link to Original Record)
- http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/vk768581bf2-e1e7-47fb-8a5d-267d261cd302
This image is in the public domain (free of copyright restrictions). You can copy, modify, and distribute this work without contacting the Smithsonian. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's Open Access page.
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