I Know'd It Was Ripe
Thomas Hovenden
American Art
I Know’d It Was Ripe is one of a number of single-figure compositions of African Americans completed by the Paris-trained Thomas Hovenden during the early to mid-1880s. These works and their titles appear highly stereotypical to the contemporary viewer, although there is little doubt that Hovenden was sympathetic to blacks, given his marriage in 1881 to Helen Corson, the daughter of activist Quaker abolitionists whose farm had been an antislavery meeting place and a stop on the Underground Railroad. In the larger social framework of the period, however, this painting and others like it contributed to the trivialization of the lives of freed blacks.
MEDIUM
Oil on canvas
DATES
ca. 1885
DIMENSIONS
21 15/16 x 15 7/8 in. (55.7 x 40.3 cm) (show scale)
SIGNATURE
Unsigned
COLLECTIONS
American Art
ACCESSION NUMBER
32.825
CREDIT LINE
Gift of the executors of the Estate of Colonel Michael Friedsam
EXHIBITIONS
MUSEUM LOCATION
This item is not on view
CAPTION
Thomas Hovenden (American, 1840–1895). I Know'd It Was Ripe, ca. 1885. Oil on canvas, 21 15/16 x 15 7/8 in. (55.7 x 40.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the executors of the Estate of Colonel Michael Friedsam, 32.825 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 32.825_SL1.jpg)
IMAGE
overall, 32.825_SL1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph
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