Tags: Artwork.
Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences (1792) is an oil-on-canvas painting by American artist Samuel Jennings.The Library Company of Philadelphia a private lending library founded in the mid-18th century commissioned Jennings (an ex-Philadelphian relocated to London) to create a work depicting the figure of Liberty (with her cap and proper Insignia) displaying the arts as a representation of slavery and a symbol of the abolitionist movement.Jennings’s painting shows a blond white Goddess of Liberty (with a liberty cap on a pike or spear) presenting books (the catalog of the Library Company and two others labeled philosophy and agriculture) to three grateful supplicant blacks (freed slaves).
