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The Lord Is My Shepherd
1863 Eastman Johnson Born: Lovell, Maine 1824 Died: New York, New York 1906 oil on wood 16 5/8 x 13 1/8 in. (42.3 x 33.2 cm.) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of Mrs. Francis P. Garvan 1979.5.13 Not currently on view
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
Keywords
Ethnic - African-American
Figure male
Figure(s) in interior - domestic
Recreation - leisure - reading
Religion - Christianity
painting
paint - oil
wood
About Eastman Johnson
Born: Lovell, Maine 1824 Died: New York, New York 1906
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