The Last Moments of John Brown

The Last Moments of John Brown

Thomas Hovenden

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 1859 John Brown, the controversial abolitionist, led a raid on a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), intending to arm enslaved African Americans. Brown had come to believe that the only way to end slavery in America was through bloodshed. Captured and convicted of treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, Brown was sentenced to die by hanging. His hasty trial electrified the nation, and a sensational newspaper account reported how he paused on his way to the scaffold to kiss a baby. At the request of a patron two decades later, Hovenden, also an abolitionist, made it the subject of this sympathetic work.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Last Moments of John BrownThe Last Moments of John BrownThe Last Moments of John BrownThe Last Moments of John BrownThe Last Moments of John Brown

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.