Extraordinary Gifts: Selected Paintings from The Procter and Gamble Collection at the Cincinnati Art Museum February 15, 2003 to September 12, 2004 Extraordinary Gifts: Selected Paintings from The Procter and Gamble Collection at the Cincinnati Art Museum Cincinnati Art Museum logo
A Word from P&G - Overview of Extraordinary Gifts: Selected Paintings from The Procter and Gamble Collection at the Cincinnati Art Museum Cincinnati Painters and the Big Picture - discusses how Cincinnati Artists fit into a larger art historical perspective The Works from The P&G Collection - themed galleries of the works in the show Index by Artist Name - a list of all the artists represented in the show and the works they completed Go back to the Cincinnati Art Museum Home page
James Henry Beard (1811–1893)
North Carolina Emigrants: Poor White Folks, 1845
oil on canvas
42 x 59 3/8 in.

Born in New York, Beard became a traveling portrait painter at seventeen, settling in Cincinnati in 1830. At first glance, North Carolina Emigrants: Poor White Folks seems like a simple depiction of a group of peasants. However, this painting is highly charged with political meaning. The painting shows a family of poor Southerners making their way north to Ohio. Wearing ragged clothing and dire expressions, the fatigued emigrants have paused to give their cow a drink. Although not obvious to the modern viewer, this painting is a statement against slavery. The family represents the poor white laborers of the South, forced out of work by the slave industry. Beard and other abolitionists believed that slavery damaged the very structure of labor, disallowing any possible economic or social improvement for working whites of the South.