The Cotton Pickers
1876 Los Angeles County Museum of Art
About this artwork
This oil on canvas painting depicts two African American women working in a vast cotton field. It is a significant work from the Reconstruction era that highlights the harsh labor conditions of post-Civil War life in the American South.
Did you know?
Winslow Homer painted this work while visiting Virginia shortly after the end of the American Civil War. The painting is widely noted for its departure from the common caricatures of Black laborers in 19th-century art, instead presenting the women with dignity, seriousness, and individual presence. It serves as a poignant observation of the agrarian labor reality during the transition of the South.
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The Cotton Pickers
Winslow Homer, 1876
