Overview
This web page has been set up as a centralized resource for members of the Library Company community as we think about how best to present and interpret Samuel Jennings’ 1792 painting, “Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences.” It includes contemporary accounts of the commissioning of the painting, contemporary responses to it, as well as scholarly discussions of the painting and contemporary reactions and opinions by members of the community.
The Library Company was formed by a group of people who found it was important to consult books as part of their discussions and debates. Following their precedent, you might think of this as a small library of resources to guide our conversations about this painting.
The Painting
[Click image to enlarge & zoom in]
Contemporary Context
[LCP board minutes, letters between Jennings and his father, contemporary newspaper accounts, etc.]
- Entry from Franklin Papers on Jennings
- Transcription of LCP Board Minutes re: Jennings
- Account of Liberty in the Federal Gazette, May 30, 1792
- Advertisement for print of Liberty – Dunlap’s American Daily Advertiser – June 2, 1792
- Advertisement for print of Liberty – in General Advertiser, May 1792
- William Dunlap – Arts of Design – on Samuel Jennings (1918 ed.)
- List of items exhibited at the Royal Academy – Jennings
- Jennings at the 1795 Columbianum
Publications Discussing the Painting
- Robert Smith Winterthur Portfolio 1965**(Especially Useful Summary of Liberty‘s history)**
- Jennings study of Liberty at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Exhibition Catalog – From Colony to Nation – Art Institute of Chicago (1949)
- Exhibition Catalog – Facing History: The Black Image in Contemporary Art – Corcoran Gallery of Art (1990). (Jennings item by Guy C. McElroy)
- American Paintings and Related Pictures in the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum. Edgar P. Richardson. (1986).
- Mandle Fielding’s Dictionary entry for Jennings
- Laurel Thatcher Ullrich draft Paper on Liberty.
- Exhibition Catalog – The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution
- Prof. Jenna Gibbs, from Phil Lapsansky: Appreciations
- Prof. Heather Nathans, from Phil Lapsansky: Appreciations
- Prof. Ashli White, from Phil Lapsansky: Appreciations
- “Free The Slaves – And Then What?” by Sheldon Cheek, from The Root web magazine
- School curriculum about abolition from the American Revolution Institute using Liberty as a focus of discussion
- Dr. Stephen Shapiro presentation and slides: The Archive as an Engine of Social Change.
- Library Company “Fireside Chat” Conversation with Assistant Prof. Emily Casey, “Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences: Abolition and Empire in the Post-Revolution Atlantic World“
Comparable Cases
- David Blight on the DC Freedmens’ Memorial
- Guardian Piece on Douglass Letter – Emancipation Monument
- Portrait of Elihu Yale (with enslaved child) article from Yale Daily News
- Library Company “Fireside Chat” Conversation with Associate Professor Teresa A. Goddu. “Selling Antislavery: Abolition and Mass Media in Antebellum America”
LCP Memos & Documents
- LCP Catalog Information
- Memo from LCP Staff re: Requesting Move
- Memo from Michael Barsanti to LCP Staff and Board about move