The Freedman
Modeled 1862–63
Medium
Bronze
Dimensions
49.9 × 40 × 23.9 cm (19 5/8 × 15 3/4 × 9 3/8 in.)
Classification
sculpture
Department
Arts of the Americas
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
149776
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
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 atte...
About the Artist
John Quincy Adams Ward · 1830–1910
John Quincy Adams Ward (1830–1910) was born in Urbana, Ohio, the fourth of eight children, and displayed an early aptitude for three-dimensional form, modeling figures in clay from childhood. In 1849 he moved to Brooklyn, New York, to apprentice under the sculptor Henry Kirke Brown, with whom he worked for seven years. Brown's emphasis on American subjects and his conviction that sculpture should ...