The Freedman

Modeled 1862–63

John Quincy Adams Ward (American, 1830–1910)

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 attention to realism. Here, he modeled the figure from life, transposing the particularities of an individual sitter to a subject both idealized and moralistic in tone.

Status: On View, Gallery 171
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 (Art Institute of Chicago, 1998), 193–195, cat. 88 (ill.).
Clare Kunny and Andrew Walker, “Introduction,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 27, no. 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, no. 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, no. 1 (2001): 26–39, fig. 2.
Adriano Pedrosa, ed., Afro-Atlantic Histories, exh. cat. (New York: DelMonico Books, 2021), no cat. no., fig. 85 (ill.).
Thayer Tolles, “The Freedman in Multiple: A Look at Its Casting History,” in Emancipation: The Unfinished Project of Liberation, ed. Margaret C. Adler, exh. cat. (Fort Worth, TX: Amon Carter Museum of American Art, 2023), 96–111 (another example ill.).

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Afro–Atlantic Histories, Oct. 24, 2021–Jan. 17, 2022, no cat. no.; Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, Apr. 10–July 17, 2022; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Dec. 11, 2022–Sept. 10, 2023; Dallas Museum of Art, Oct. 22, 2023–Feb. 11, 2024 (Washington, DC, only).

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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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.

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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.

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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.

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