John Quincy Adams Ward (American, 1830–1910)
The Freedman
INV-1497
John Quincy Adams Ward (American, 1830–1910)Modeled 1862–63
The Freedman
John Quincy Adams Ward (American, 1830–1910) →Realismsculptureamerican arts
Date
Modeled 1862–63
Medium
Bronze
Dimensions
49.9 × 40 × 23.9 cm (19 5/8 × 15 3/4 × 9 3/8 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Roger McCormick Endowment
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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