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In this painting, there is a man seated on the ground, one leg bent and one left stretched in front of him, facing the left. He sits in front of what looks like a stack of cotton bales, with fluffy white material peeking out of brown fabric. The man has peach-colored skin and a short brown beard, and his hair is obscured by a tan hat with a black ribbon. He wears a long-sleeved light blue shirt and light blue trousers, with a patch of red on his chest - perhaps a handkerchief in a breast pocket. His arms rest on his legs, and he has on dark brown boots. He has a white-and-silver pipe in his mouth and a wooden mallet or hammer tucked into his belt. The wall behind the brown bales is a brownish-gray color, and the floor beneath the man is brown, and scattered with white tufts.
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In this painting, there is a man seated on the ground, one leg bent and one left stretched in front of him, facing the left. He sits in front of what looks like a stack of cotton bales, with fluffy white material peeking out of brown fabric. The man has peach-colored skin and a short brown beard, and his hair is obscured by a tan hat with a black ribbon. He wears a long-sleeved light blue shirt and light blue trousers, with a patch of red on his chest - perhaps a handkerchief in a breast pocket. His arms rest on his legs, and he has on dark brown boots. He has a white-and-silver pipe in his mouth and a wooden mallet or hammer tucked into his belt. The wall behind the brown bales is a brownish-gray color, and the floor beneath the man is brown, and scattered with white tufts.

National Gallery of Art · Painting

A Longshoreman

John George Brown

Date
n.d.
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 30.48 × 45.72 cm (12 × 18 in.) framed: 46.99 × 60.33 × 6.99 cm (18 1/2 × 23 3/4 × 2 3/4 in.)
Classification
Painting
Accession number
2015.19.238
Credit line
Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase by exchange: Mr. and Mrs. Ignatius Sargent)
Time span
1826 to 1850
Department
CAB
Original NGA record Wikidata

Subjects and terms

  • painted surface
  • American
  • Acquired after publication of American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I [A-L]
  • Realist
  • full figure seated
  • figure
  • longshoremen
  • genre
  • Longshoreman
Provenance

The artist; (his sale, by Robert Somerville, Fifth Avenue Art Galleries, New York, 26-27 January 1892, 1st day, no. 5); Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York; (his sale, American Art Galleries, 14-17 February 1899, no. 20); A. Steckler. (sale, O'Reilly's Plaza Art Galleries, New York).[1] (John Levy Galleries, New York), in 1944.[2] private collection; by descent to consignor to 2009 sale; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, New York, 5 March 2009, no. 138); purchased by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2015 by the National Gallery of Art. [1] This information is from a label on the back of the frame. The painting has not yet been identified in an O'Reilly auction. [2] The painting was included in an exhibition at the Levy Galleries; no owners were identified in the exhibition checklist.

Inscription

lower right: J.G. Brown N.A.

NGA object ID 175339. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.