Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences

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Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences
Samuel Jennings, 1792
Oil-on-canvas
38.1 × 45.72 cm
Library Company of Philadelphia

Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences, (1792), is an oil-on-canvas painting by American artist Samuel Jennings.

The Library Company of Philadelphia, a private lending library founded in the mid-18th century, commissioned Jennings (an ex-Philadelphian relocated to London) to create a work depicting "the figure of Liberty (with her cap and proper Insignia) displaying the arts", as a representation of slavery and a symbol of the abolitionist movement.

Jennings's painting shows a blonde, white Goddess of Liberty (with a liberty cap on a pike or spear) presenting books (labeled "philosophy" and "agriculture") to three grateful, supplicant blacks (freed slaves). Surrounding the four figures, in the foreground, are various symbols of knowledge and learning: a bust, a scroll (labeled "geometry"), papers and columns (architecture); a globe (geography), a lyre and sheet music (music), and a paper with escutcheons on it (history and heraldry). In the background, former slaves are dancing and celebrating around a liberty pole; behind them is a lake or other body of water with a ship.

The work is the earliest exant celebrating emancipation.

[edit] Sources

  • Nelson, Charmaine. "Hiram Powers's America: Shackles, Slaves, and the Racial Limits of Nineteenth-Century Identity." Canadian Review of American Studies. Volume 34, Number 2: 2004 (p. 167-183). [1]
  • Library Company (official website)
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