The Lord Is My Shepherd
1863
Medium
Painting
Classification
Painting
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Francis P. Garvan
Accession Number
1979.5.13
Tags
About this artwork
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...
About the Artist
Eastman Johnson · 1824–1906
Eastman Johnson (1824–1906) was an American painter known as "the American Rembrandt" for his richly toned genre paintings and portraits that constitute one of the most important visual records of nineteenth-century American life. Born in Lovell, Maine, he trained in Düsseldorf, The Hague — where he studied the Dutch Old Masters extensively — and Paris before returning to the United States. Johns...