Sunday Morning

1877

Thomas Waterman Wood American, 1823-1903

On View

American, Level 2, West Wing

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About the Artwork

A Black girl sits on a low stool with a large family Bible open on her lap. Though young, she already knows how to read. Next to her, an elderly woman sits with her hands clasped in devotion. A gold wedding band glimmers on her ring finger. A modest fire burns in the fireplace, symbolizing the love uniting the residents of a simple, well-kept home. In spring 1877, President Rutherford Hayes ended Reconstruction — the use of Federal troops to protect the civil rights of Black people living in former Confederate states. Thomas Waterman Wood painted Sunday Morning to protest that decision. Although nothing in the painting suggests that the older woman had been enslaved, the artist almost certainly expected that many contemporary viewers would assume that she had been. Sunday Morning suggests that formerly enslaved Black Americans were just as hard working, family oriented, and religiously devout as white Americans.

Title Sunday Morning

Artwork Date 1877

Artist Thomas Waterman Wood

Life Dates 1823-1903

Nationality Please note: Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events. Some definitions include: Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation. American

Culture Please note: Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group. Unknown

Medium Oil on panel

Dimensions Overall: 19 3/4 × 15 3/4 inches (50.2 × 40 cm)

Classification Paintings

Department American Art before 1950

Credit Museum Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund

Accession Number This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection. Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings. For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups. 2009.87

Markings

Signed Signed and dated, lower left: T W Wood | 1877

Provenance

1877, Milford Fish

his great-nephew, Frederic Warriner (Pasadena, California, USA)

1991-2007, private collection. 2009-present, purchase by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)

For more information on provenance and its important function in the museum, please visit:

Provenance page

Exhibition History

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The exhibition history of a number of objects in our collection only begins after their acquisition by the museum, and may reflect an incomplete record.

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Published References

Illustrated Catalogue of the 52nd Annual Exhibition. Exh. cat., National Academy of Design. New York, 1877, p. 51 (ill.).

Harper’s Weekly 21, 1059 (April 14, 1877): p. 289 (ill.).

“Academy of Design. III. Genre-Pictures.” New-York Tribune (April 16, 1877): p. 5.

Thomas Waterman Wood PNA, 1823-1903. Exh. cat., Wood Art Gallery. Montpelier, VT, 1972, p. 48.

Cikovsky, Nicolai Jr. and Franklin Kelly. Winslow Homer. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1995, p. 96 (fig. 74).

Conrads, Margaret C. Winslow Homer and the Critics: Forging a National Art in the 1870s. Exh. cat., Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Kansas City, 2001, p. 128, no. 38.

Morgan, Jo-Ann. Uncle Tom's Cabin as Visual Culture. Columbia, Missouri, 2007, p. 148, no. 38.

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