# The Freedman

- By: John Quincy Adams Ward (American, 1830–1910)
- Date: Modeled 1862–63
- Medium: Bronze
- Classification: Sculpture
- Dimensions: 49.9 × 40 × 23.9 cm (19 5/8 × 15 3/4 × 9 3/8 in.)
- Culture: United States
- Credit line: Roger McCormick Endowment
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/149776)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/44506581-ba5e-57bf-713d-8dd3b3b80310/full/!1762,1080/0/default.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

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.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0