Publisher's Synopsis
Discover a lost world of farmers cutting hay with scythes and dancing to fiddle music on barn floors through the Long Island paintings of William Sidney Mount. Explore vivid depictions of people of color, presented with great humanity when racist caricatures were the norm. This book reveals the lives of Rachel, the eel spearer; Henry Brazier, the left-handed fiddler; George Freeman, model for the jaunty banjo player, and other agricultural labourers, domestic workers, and musicians who posed for the artist. Authors Katherine Kirkpatrick and Vivian Nicholson-Mueller take readers on a fascinating historical journey as they publicly honour, by name, the once-anonymous Black and mixed-race models whose images have achieved international recognition.
