7/11/2016
(14) Johnson, A Ride for Liberty -- The Fugitive Slaves | Realism in the United States | Art of the United States: 1800s | Art of the Americas to World War I | K…
Johnson, A Ride for Liberty -- The Fugitive Slaves
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Eastman Johnson, A Ride for Liberty -- The Fugitive Slaves, c. 1862, oil
on paper board, 55.8 x 66.4 cm (Brooklyn Museum)
At the time of the Civil War
Today, Eastman Johnson is most well known for the small
genre paintings he completed during the middle of the
nineteenth century. In several of these images—Old
Kentucky Home–Negro Life in the South (1859) is a good
example—Johnson focused on the status of race in the
United States right about the time of the American Civil
War. If this was the first painting he completed that
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centered attention on the issues of slavery and race in
America, then A Ride for Liberty—The Fugitive Slaves is
perhaps a just as famous second. Eastman Johnson, Old Kentucky Home—Negro Life at the South, 1859,
oil on canvas, 36 x 45.25 inches (New York Historical Society)
Slaves crossing the battlefield In A Ride for Liberty, Johnson recreates an event
commonly seen during the American Civil War, that of
slaves crossing battlefields from the Confederate South
to the Union North in order to escape the horrors of their
bondage. In this painting, Johnson depicts three African
Americans—presumably a family consisting of a father,
mother, and small child— on horseback. The horse
gallops from right to left across the nearly barren
battlefield. Each family member looks in a different
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direction. The father, ahead to the promise of the future,
the wife looks back to the hardships of the past, while the
child stares downwards at the excitement of the present. Family (detail), Eastman Johnson, A Ride for Liberty—The Fugitive
Slaves, c. 1862, oil on paper board, 55.8 x 66.4 cm (Brooklyn Museum)
A comparison
In addition to the directions of their gazes, the placement
of the figures on the canvas has importance. Previous
artists often depicted African Americans on the edge of
the composition as if to marginalize their importance.
William Sidney Mount’s The Power of Music (1847) is but
one example. In contrast, Johnson chose instead to
focus the composition on the African Americans and their
dramatic escape to the free North. The sympathetic
depiction and the year in which it was painted—1862—
strongly speaks to this image being one that visually
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speaks to the Union causes in the American Civil War,
and more specifically to the abolition of slavery.
William Sidney Mount, The Power of Music, 1847, oil on canvas, 67 x 78
cm (The Cleveland Museum of Art)
Seen firsthand
Moreover, Johnson later claimed that this panting was
not an artistic flight of fancy, but was instead an accurate
rendering of something he saw firsthand. The event he
depicted happened on 2 March 1862 on the battlefield in
Manassas, Virginia. In the left background, Johnson
recreated the Union army, then under the command of
General McClellan. As McClellan marched southward,
slaves often fled to cross his Union lines and secure their
freedom.
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Union army in the background (detail), Eastman Johnson, A Ride for
Liberty—The Fugitive Slaves, c. 1862, oil on paper board, 55.8 x 66.4 cm
(Brooklyn Museum)
White socks?
On close examination, further details emerge. During the
time period surrounding the Civil War, horses were often
characterized by the number of “white socks” they had. It
was then believed that the fewer the number of white
socks, the greater a horse’s value. Indeed, during the
middle of the nineteenth century horse traders believed
there was a direct relationship between the amount of
white on a horse’s lower limbs and its stamina. Thus, a
horse having only one—or more preferably, none at all—
white sock would increase its potential value. When
applying this to Johnson’s painting, we can observe that
the horse the soon-to-be-free slaves ride has only one
white sock, and it is a small one at that. This indicates—
for the nineteenth-century viewer, at least—that the
horse, that had been stolen in this noble cause, was both
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valuable and of good breeding.
From Maine to Dusseldorf
Without doubt, Johnson’s life experiences impacted the
subjects he aspired to paint. He was born in Lovell,
Maine—a free state, of course—and later moved to
Washington, D.C., a locale with both free and slave
populations. Johnson’s formal artistic education began at
the age of sixteen when he was apprenticed with a
Boston lithographer. In 1845, Johnson moved to the
nation’s capital and began completing portraits,
demonstrating nearly equal skill in chalk, crayon, and
charcoal. The fact that Johnson could support himself
from his art without extensive formal instruction at such
an early age is a profound testament to his innate artistic
skill.
Since colonial times, artists from North America have
travelled abroad in search of artistic instruction. During
the 18th century, for example, American artists traveled
to London to study in the studio of Benjamin West. John
Vanderlyn broke this trend by travelling to Paris and
studying at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. During the middle
of the nineteenth century, however, artists began to travel
further east into the continent in search of innovative
artistic instruction. In 1849 Johnson joined other
international artists in Germany to study at the Düsseldorf
Akademie, an institution that specialized in instruction in
genre and landscape painting. During his two-year stay in
Germany, Johnson became acquainted with Emanuel
Leutze, and both painted small genre paintings. After his
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tenure at the Düsseldorf Akademie, Johnson continued
his international studies at The Hague for three years.
His deep admiration and emulation of Dutch painters
earned him the nickname of “American Rembrandt.”
A sympathetic treatment
However, the subject matter of the Dutch Rembrandt and
the American Rembrandt were clearly very different.
Indeed, Eastman Johnson’s A Ride for Liberty—The
Fugitive Slaves is different from much of the art seen
even in antebellum United States. The artistic focus on
African Americans during the Civil War was not
completely new—Winslow Homer’s art from the early
1860s comes to mind—but Eastman’s sympathetic
treatment was relatively rare. Rather than pushing
African Americans to the border of the composition,
Johnson instead focuses the composition on their plight.
In all, this composition forcefully and clearly speaks to the
abolition of slavery and the Union cause in the American
Civil War. As such, A Ride for Liberty—The Fugitive
Slave, maintains a justifiable position in the history of
American art. Essay by Scott Mestan and Dr. Bryan Zygmont
Additional Resources:
This painting in the Brooklyn Museum
American Scenes of Everyday Life in the Metropolitan
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Museum of Art's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
Photographs of African Americans during the Civil War at
the Library of Congress
John Davis, "Eastman Johnson's Negro Life in the South
and Urban Slavery in Washington D.C." Art Bulletin,
March 1998
Eastman Johnson Papers in the Archives of American
Art Eastman Johnson in the Google Art Project Realism in the United States
Francis Guy, Winter Scene in Brooklyn
Mount, Bargaining for a Horse
Richard Caton Woodville, War News from Mexico
Johnson, A Ride for Liberty -- The Fugitive Slaves
Eakins, The Champion Single Sculls (Max Schmitt in a Single
Scull)
Eakins, The Gross Clinic
Homer, The Life Line
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Homer, The Fog Warning (Halibut Fishing)
Homer, Northeaster
Brown, View of the Lower Falls, Grand Canyon of the
Yellowstone
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