The Lord Is My Shepherd

1863 · Painting · 42.3 × 33.2 cm

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Smithsonian American Art Museum

Washington, Stati Uniti

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Ultimo cambio di stato: 25 set 2026
Fonte: Il museo

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The Lord Is My Shepherd is an 1863 oil-on-wood painting by American artist Eastman Johnson. The painting measures 16 5/8 x 13 1/8 in. (42.3 x 33.2 cm.) and is on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, in Washington, D.C.

The title of the painting comes from Psalm 23, which begins with the line: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want." Johnson painted it just after the Emancipation Proclamation was announced in 1863. Its imagery includes an African-American man reading the first part of a Bible, possibly the Book of Exodus. He is sitting against a blue jacket, which may indicate service in the Union army. President Abraham Lincoln had recently authorized organization of the United States Colored Troops. This is one of several works by Eastman Johnson with African-American subjects.

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Con le parole del museo

Eastman Johnson painted The Lord Is My Shepherd only months after the Emancipation Proclamation of New Year's Day, 1863. The image of a humble black man reading from his Bible was reassuring to white Americans uncertain of what to expect from the freed slaves. But the simple act of reading was itself a political issue. Emancipation meant that blacks must educate themselves in order to be productive, responsible citizens. In the slaveholding South, teaching a black person to read had been a crime; in the North, the issue was not "May they read?" but "They must read."

Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006

Smithsonian American Art Museum