The Freedman

Arts of the Americas

1862–63

John Quincy Adams Ward
American, 1830–1910

A leader among the nation’s second generation of sculptors, John Quincy Adams Ward played a significant role in elevating the medium in the United States, calling for a new realism to address moral concerns. Inspired by Abraham Lincoln’s 1862–63 Emancipation Proclamation, The Freedman reflects not only Ward’s aspiration to create relevant statements on pressing issues of the day but also his abolitionist sentiments. Using antiquity as his inspiration, he depicted a seminude man seated on a tree stump who has just been liberated from the shackles that bound him to slavery. Ward broke artistic convention by showing the former enslaved person as master of his own destiny, not a man reliant on white men for freedom. The vestiges of chains, potent symbols of his bondage, dangle from both wrists, and his muscular body, turned to look over his shoulder, is contained within a formal, triangular composition. The Freedman was modeled from life and is generally considered among the first naturalistic sculptural representations of an African American. Shortly after The Freedman was first exhibited in 1863, art critic James Jackson Jarves effectively summarized the work’s power: “We have seen nothing in our sculpture more soul-lifting or more comprehensively eloquent. It tells in one word the whole sad story of slavery and the bright story of emancipation.”

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: John Quincy Adams Ward (Sculptor)
Title: The Freedman
Place: United States (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Modeled 1863
Medium: Bronze
Inscriptions: Signed on base: J.Q.A. Ward. Scp. 1863
Dimensions: 49.9 × 40 × 23.9 cm (19 5/8 × 15 3/4 × 9 3/8 in.)
Credit Line: Roger McCormick Endowment
Reference Number: 1998.1
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/149776/manifest.json

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), 193–195, no. 88.
Clare Kunny and Andrew Walker, “Introduction,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 27, 1 (2001), 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), 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), 26–39, fig. 2.

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Afro-Atlantic Histories, Oct. 24, 2021–Jan. 17, 2022, cat. (ill. fig. 85); Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, Apr. 10–July 17, 2022.

Samuel L. Stone, Boston, mid-1940s; given by his wife to their son, Stephen Stone, Las Vegas, NV, by 1995 [purchased by Samuel Stone after 1945 and given to Stephen Stone following Samuel’s death; according to letter from Stephen Stone, dated June 7, 1995, copy in curatorial object file]; sold, Sotheby’s, New York, May 25, 1995, lot 177, to Conner-Rosenkranz, New York; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1998.

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