Snapshots of the Past

[Nat Turner's dream - sleeping runaway slave] / Bernarda Bryson. – Historic Reproduction

[Nat Turner's dream - sleeping runaway slave] / Bernarda Bryson. — historic drawing
[Nat Turner's dream - sleeping runaway slave] / Bernarda Bryson.. Historic drawing from the African American History collection.

(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)

Description

This rare historic drawing captures [Nat Turner's dream - sleeping runaway slave] / Bernarda Bryson. in remarkable detail. It comes from the collections of the Library of Congress, scanned from the original and carefully restored.

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[Nat Turner's dream - sleeping runaway slave] / Bernarda Bryson.

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Bernarda Bryson's 1935 ink and watercolor pairs Nat Turner, the Virginia preacher who led an uprising in Southampton County in 1831, with a sleeping figure identified as a runaway enslaved person. Turner later described visions he believed revealed a divine purpose, and the title ties the scene to one of those dreams rather than to a documented event. The subject also connects to the Underground Railroad, the network of routes and safe houses enslaved people used to reach free states and Canada before the Civil War. Bryson made the work during the Depression, and it is worth noticing how she turned a 19th-century story into a quiet, symbolic image.

Medium1 drawing : ink and watercolor.
Notes[1935]
SubjectsTurner, Nat,--1800?-1831. Fugitive slaves--1840-1860. Sleeping--1820-1830. Underground railroad system--1840-1860.
SourceLibrary of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Original scan3,513 × 1,433 px · prints to 12 × 5 in at 300 dpi
Referencetif05935_NatTurnersdreamsleepingrunaway

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