  About the Artwork
  
  
  A Black girl sits on a low stool with a large family Bible open on her lap. Through 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.
  
  
  
  
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  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
  
  
  Copyright
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