# The Power of Music

- By: William Sidney Mount (American, 1807–1868)
- Date: 1847
- Medium: oil on canvas
- Classification: Painting
- Dimensions: Framed: 67 x 78 x 7.5 cm (26 3/8 x 30 11/16 x 2 15/16 in.); Unframed: 43.4 x 53.5 cm (17 1/16 x 21 1/16 in.)
- Culture: United States
- Credit line: Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
- Museum: [Cleveland Museum of Art](https://clevelandart.org/art/1991.110)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1991.110/1991.110_web.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

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.