Art Institute of Chicago

The Freedman

John Quincy Adams Ward (American, 1830–1910)

Date

Modeled 1862–63

Medium

Bronze

Culture

United States

Department

Arts of the Americas

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

In the fall of 1862, shortly after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, John Quincy Adams Ward began modeling The Freedman . A supporter of abolitionism, the sculptor employed a classically inspired vocabulary to sensitively portray a Black male figure, a broken shackle on his wrist. With his right hand steadied on a tree stump behind him, the man twists his torso, the energy of his position suggesting that he is about to stand. Ward harmonized neoclassicism with a renewed attention to realism. Here, he modeled the figure from life, transposing the particularities of an individual sitter to a subject both idealized and moralistic in tone.

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