
Collection Online as of July 5, 2022
(American, 1807-1868)
Oil on canvas
Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1991.110
207 American Realism
Set in rural Long Island before the Civil War, Mount's complex painting presents an African American laborer listening intently to a fiddle tune enjoyed by white men. While a love of music unites the figures in a bond of shared humanity, the two races occupy different spaces--one inside, one outside, both separated by a barn door--effectively symbolizing the pronounced divisions in America at the time.