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Image

RISDM 43-346.tif
RISDM 43-346.tif
RISDM 43-346.tif
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  • RISDM 43-346.tif
  • RISDM 43-346.tif
  • RISDM 43-346.tif

A. Wighe

Trial by Jury

Description

Maker

A. Wighe (American, active 1849)

Title

Trial by Jury

Year

1849

Medium

  • Oil on canvas

Materials/Techniques

Techniques

  • Oil on canvas

Materials

oil paint

Supports

  • canvas

Dimensions

88.9 x 121.9 cm (35 x 48 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

Signature: Signed LR on ox-yoke:Painted by A. Wighe Chia. Co. N.Y. 1849

Credit / Object Number

Credit

Gift of Edith Jackson Green and F. Ellis Jackson

Object Number

43.346

Type

  • Paintings

Projects & Publications

Publications

Pub_ID 1281 Selection VII American Painting from the Museums Collection v_01.jpg
  • Books

Selection VII: American Painting from the Museum's Collection, c.1800-1930

Read Online ›

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

United Histories
Mar 23, 2018 – Aug 12, 2018

Label copy

These two works offer starkly different perspectives on the American justice system, informed by the 160 years separating them, and their emphasis on white or African American subjects.

The painting takes place in a barn and depicts a trial, presumably of the figure leaning back in the Windsor chair. The artist’s name is likely a pseudonym for “a Whig,” declaring an affiliation with the Whig Party. This work was made just after the 1848 presidential election, which had been won by the Whig candidate Zachary Taylor, a slave-holding Southerner. Whigs from the North and South soon became bitterly divided over slavery, and the party collapsed entirely leading up to the Civil War. This painting may represent an effort to deflect attention toward the less serious or troubling affairs of the time.

The sharply critical tone of Johnson’s work is emblematic of the more active role political considerations have played in American art since the 1950s. Johnson spraypaints crosshairs over a model representing Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993), the first African American Supreme Court justice, underscoring the racial injustices Marshall challenged as a lawyer and a judge. It also recalls the logo for the hiphop group Public Enemy, whose song “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” is referenced in the work’s title. The song presents the perspective of an African American man imprisoned as an antiwar protestor.

[see also: 2012.133.3.5]

An American Idyll
19th-Century Paintings and Decorative Arts
Apr 06, 2007 – Jan 06, 2008
After Eden
The Rise and Reform of American Art, 1840-1910
Apr 26, 1996 – Dec 29, 1996
From the Reserve IV
Nineteenth-Century American Painting
Jul 22, 1994 – Oct 02, 1994
Romanticism and Revival
Nineteenth-Century American Art from the Permanent Collection
Dec 04, 1992 – Jun 26, 1993
  • More Exhibition Hitory +

Use & Feedback

Image use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use.

This object is in the Public Domain and available under a CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication

Tombstone

A. Wighe (American, active 1849)
Trial by Jury, 1849
Oil on canvas
88.9 x 121.9 cm (35 x 48 inches)
Gift of Edith Jackson Green and F. Ellis Jackson 43.346

To request new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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