Allegory of Freedom

American 19th Century

National Gallery of Art

The painting shows a landscape including distant hills under a pale blue sky with clouds. Below the hills is a body of water with some small red rowboats on it. Closer to us, to the right of center, is an American flag on a flagpole. A child in a black suit and a woman in a red dress stand facing the flagpole, and a man stands in front of them, facing us. He is in a blue uniform with long buttons down the front and a red belt. The man is holding broken pieces of a chain in either hand and appears to be standing in a light gray puddle. All three of these people have blue-gray skin and black hair, and there is a small black-and-white dog by them near the bottom right corner. To the left of center, a man riding a horse holds up another American flag. This man is wearing a similar blue uniform and has slightly paler gray skin. He also holds another flag in his other hand, which he allows to drag on the ground, and this flag is red with a wide white stripe in the center and a blue and gold section in the top left. Behind him is another rider on horseback who is mostly in shadow, and behind that a man stands by a tree near two horses that appear to be hitched to a wagon. In the background on the left, there is a tall white monument, and on the right is an arched structure made of light brown stone with a large gray bird sitting on top of it and more horses standing below it.