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    Museum collections / Art Institute of Chicago
    The Freedman
    John Quincy Adams Ward. The Freedman, Modeled 1862–63. The Art Institute of Chicago. Public domain (CC0).

    Public collection via the Art Institute of Chicago

    AT-00001979

    The Freedman

    by John Quincy Adams Ward

    View at the Art Institute of Chicago

    Inscriptions

    Signed on base: J.Q.A. Ward. Scp. 1863

    Provenance

    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.

    Exhibition history

    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).

    Publications

    Lorado Taft, The History of American Sculpture (Macmillan, 1924), 220–21, 229. 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. (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.).

    Open-access museum data

    This record comes from the open-access collection data that the Art Institute of Chicago publishes for unrestricted use (Creative Commons Zero). Art Trackers shows a selection of the museum's published fields. The Art Institute of Chicago is not an Art Trackers client and has not reviewed or endorsed this page; the museum's own website is the authoritative record.

    • View this work at the Art Institute of Chicago
    • The Art Institute of Chicago: open-access terms

    Data retrieved from the Art Institute of Chicago on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.

    Quick Overview

    Artist
    John Quincy Adams Ward (American, 1830–1910)
    Date
    Modeled 1862–63
    Medium
    Bronze
    Dimensions
    49.9 × 40 × 23.9 cm (19 5/8 × 15 3/4 × 9 3/8 in.)
    Type
    Sculpture
    Classification
    sculpture
    Style
    Realism
    Place
    United States
    Department
    Arts of the Americas
    Credit line
    Roger McCormick Endowment
    Accession no.
    1998.1

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      John Quincy Adams Ward

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      AT-00018030
    • Standing Male Figure (Jesus Christ?) (from Sketchbook)

      John Quincy Adams Ward

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    • Native American and Equestrian Studies (from Sketchbook)

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    Open-access museum record · AT-00001979

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