Collection Highlights
Draft wheel
ca. 1863
1865.6
Wood, metal
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Museum Collections
Luce Center
John Brown's Blessing
Title
John Brown's Blessing
Date
1867
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
canvas: 84 1/4 x 60 1/4 in. ( 214 x 153 cm )
frame: 89 x 65 x 2 in. (226.1 x 165.1 x 5.1 cm)
Description
John Brown (1800-1859) of Osawatomie, being led to his execution at Charleston, Virginia, December 2, 1859. Brown stops to bless a young black child held forward by a kneeling mother. Two white children, accompanied by their black nurse, look on. Surrounded by soldiers, his arms bound, Brown stands tall and resolute but turns a gentle gaze on the child.
Credit Line
Gift of the children of Thomas S. Noble and Mary C. Noble, in their memory
Object Number
1939.250
Inscriptions
Inscribed on back of canvas: T. S. Noble and John Brown / by T. S. Noble / C[incinnati], U.S. A.
Gallery Label
In 1859, John Brown's planned slave uprising, raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia and subsequent execution galvanized the nation. Abolitionists celebrated him as a martyr to the antislavery cause while southern whites denounced him and his northern supporters. Thomas S. Noble's heroic life-size painting depicts Brown's apocryphal last act: kissing a slave child on the way to the gallows. To commemorate the eighth anniversary of Brown's execution, John Brown's Blessing was publicly exhibited in Boston, where it received a lukewarm reception. A local newspaper reported: "[The anniversary was] appropriately commemorated by the presentation to the Boston public of T. S. Noble's picture of Brown's passage to the Scaffold, when he stopped on his way to bless a negro child
Due to ongoing research, information about this object is subject to change.
