About This Artwork

John Quincy Adams Ward
American, 1830-1910

The Freedman, 1862-63

Bronze
49.9 x 40 x 23.9 cm (19 5/8 x 15 3/4 x 9 3/8 in.)
Signed: "J.Q.A. Ward. Scp. 1863"
Roger McCormick Endowment, 1998.1

John Quincy Adams Ward's bronze The Freedman realistically depicts the twisting, muscular body of a seminude black man seated on a tree stump. He has just broken free from the shackles that bound him to slavery; the remnants of the chains dangle from his wrist. Ward's statuette, which was originally modeled in plaster, conveys the slave's nobility through a combination of classical proportion and physiognomic precision. Created around the time of President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, this powerful work embodies Ward's desire to portray the injustice of slavery and the plight of the African American.

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Publication History

Judith A. Barter et al, American Arts at The Art Institute of Chicago: From Colonial Times to World War I (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1998), pp. 193-195, no. 88.

Clare Kunny and Andrew Walker, “Introduction,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 27, 1 (2001), pp. 4-6.

Angela Miller, “Albert Bierstadt, Landscape Aesthetics, and the Meanings of the West in the Civil War Era,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 27, 1 (2001), pp. 40-41, 57-59.

Kirk Savage, “Molding Emancipation: John Quincy Adams Ward’s The Freedman and the Meaning of the Civil War,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 27, 1 (2001), pp. 26-39, fig. 2.