The Power of Music
Set in rural Long Island before the Civil War, Mount's complex painting presents an African American laborer listening intently to a fiddle tune enjoyed by white men. While a love of music unites the figures in a bond of shared humanity, the two races occupy different spaces--one inside, one outside, both separated by a barn door--effectively symbolizing the pronounced divisions in America at the time.
Colors in this work
Details
- Date
- 1847
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- framed: height 0.67 m, width 0.78 m, depth 0.075 m; unframed: height 0.434 m, width 0.535 m
- Origin
- America
- Department
- American Painting and Sculpture
- Holding institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Palette
-
Select a color to find related artworks.
- Image provider
- cleveland-museum-of-art
- License
- CC0-1.0
- Credit
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
Art Genome Taxonomy
12 tags
Subject Matter
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African Diaspora Both · 99%
The catalog identifies the foreground figure as an African American laborer, and the image visibly shows a Black man standing at the barn doorway.
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Racial and Ethnic Identity Both · 99%
The catalog explicitly describes racial separation, while the image places the Black laborer outside or at the threshold and the white men inside, divided by the barn door.
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Work and Workers Both · 97%
The catalog identifies a laborer, and the image shows work clothing, agricultural tools, hay, and a barn associated with rural labor.
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Related to Music Both · 99%
The catalog describes a fiddle tune, and the image clearly shows a seated man playing a violin while the other figures listen.
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Rural Life Both · 98%
The catalog places the scene in rural Long Island, and the image shows a rustic barn, hay, farm tools, and an agricultural ground surface.
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Interiors Both · 96%
The catalog describes figures occupying interior and exterior spaces separated by a barn door; the image visibly emphasizes the dark barn interior and its threshold.
Visual Qualities
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Highly Detailed Visual · 94%
The image gives sustained descriptive attention to faces, clothing, wood grain, hay, tools, instruments, and other small material details.
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Earth Tones Visual · 97%
Browns, ochers, tans, muted greens, and subdued reds dominate the painted surface, especially in the timber, hay, soil, and clothing.
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Asymmetrical Visual · 92%
The composition is unevenly weighted around the large vertical door, with the foreground figure on the right balanced against the clustered figures and deep interior on the left.
Medium and Techniques
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Oil Painting Metadata · 99%
The catalog specifies oil on canvas.
Time Periods
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19th Century Art Metadata · 99%
The catalog dates the painting to 1847, placing it within nineteenth-century art.
Geographic Regions
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American Art Metadata · 99%
The Cleveland Museum of Art catalog identifies the artist as American and the place of origin as America.
Source & rights
William Sidney Mount (American, 1807–1868). The Power of Music. Cleveland Museum of Art.
High-resolution sources
- Original TIFF ↗ 5,422 × 4,379 · Cleveland Museum Of Art · Available