A Pastoral Visit, 1881 Freedom from bondage permitted blacks to flee white ministers and churches, to “come out from under the yoke,” as one ex-slave put it. In A Pastoral Visit, Virginia-born artist Richard Norris Brooke portrays a dignified elderly black minister seated at a table with a family of his parishioners. In this sympathetic and respectful depiction, the poor family shares what it has. It is safe to say that no white minister had ever sat down for a meal in this humble northern Virginia cabin.
In the Collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.