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| The Way They Live |
Artist:Thomas Anshutz (American, Newport, Kentucky 1851–1912 Fort Washington, Pennsylvania)
Date:1879
Culture:American
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:24 x 17 in. (61 x 43.2 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Morris K. Jesup Fund, 1940
Born in Kentucky and raised in West Virginia, Thomas Anshutz moved with his family to Brooklyn in 1871. During that turbulent, post-Civil War decade, a number of artists painted images of African American life. Here, Anshutz portrays a woman and two children caring for their arid vegetable garden. The mountain setting suggests the painting may have been based on a scene the artist observed in his travels around Wheeling, West Virginia. The aestheticized lushness of the regional flora is in stark contrast to the impoverished living conditions and grim demeanor of the woman, suggesting that little had changed for emancipated blacks in Reconstruction-era America. The artist’s original title, The Way They Live, underlines the distance between the presumed white middle-class viewer and the laboring subject. The painting was later referred to with more generic titles, The Cabbage Patch or Way Down South.
Provenance
the artist's sister, Edith Anshutz, by 1912; Mrs. Wiley, before 1935; with Norman Hirschl Gallery, New York, until 1940; with M. Knoedler and Company, New York, 1940
Copyright Image
https://images.metmuseum.org
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