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Artist/Maker
Walter Williams
(Danish, born American, 1920 - 1998)
Publisher
International Graphic Arts Society
(active New York, c.1950 – c.1973)
Date1966
MediumColor woodcut
DimensionsComposition: 18 1/8 in. × 24 in. (46 × 61 cm)
Sheet: 21 5/8 × 27 1/2 in. (54.9 × 69.9 cm)
Frame: 30 × 40 in. (76.2 × 101.6 cm)
Credit LineGift of Elbert Lenrow, Class of 1923
Object number1984.393
Not on view
DescriptionWalter Williams often depicted Black children in fields or in nature, against vibrantly colored skies and with animals or flowers. Artist and scholar David Driskell described Williams’s use of “nature as metaphor: the birds in flight ... symbolize the freedom that African Americans desired to have to move about freely, undisturbed.” The foreground of Caged Bird shows a seated child, a cage and a bird. A rolling cabin with a figure standing in the doorway and what appears to be fields of cotton can be seen in the background. The relationship between the bird and the cage is ambiguous: is the bird trapped in the
cage, or has it been released and has spread its wings ready to join its fellows in the sky?
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Williams experienced a fraught and distressing childhood. His mother, who had encouraged his artistic passions, died of pneumonia when he was five years old, leaving the artist to live with his strict father and stepmother. Later, he was drafted into the army where he served in France burying soldiers. Upon his return to the US, he used the GI Bill to attend the Brooklyn Museum Art School where he studied under artists Ben Shahn (1898–1969) and Reuben Tam (1916–1991). Many of Williams’s artworks reflect the struggles of his youth and the freedom he longed for as a child. He said, “All my life I have been painting one picture. It is one that reflects my own image and the inner thoughts of my mind. I feel the naivete of a child when I paint yet I have the passions of the father that I am. I am an artist who is full of love for the world and all the images it holds.”
Collections
Additional Details
Exhibition History
2024-2025
Clinton, NY. The Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton College. "Menagerie: Animals in Art from the Wellin Museum," September 7, 2024 –June 8, 2025 (no cat.). Work exhibited in second rotation only, Spring 2025 semester.
Clinton, NY. The Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton College. "Menagerie: Animals in Art from the Wellin Museum," September 7, 2024 –June 8, 2025 (no cat.). Work exhibited in second rotation only, Spring 2025 semester.
Signature
Signed and dated LRC: "Walter Williams 1966 imp"
Inscribed
Recto LLC "33/210 - 'Caged Bird' "
William E. Williams
Date: 2003–4 (printed 2007)
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Object number: 2008.5.3
Date: c. 883-859 BCE
Medium: Gypsum with remnants of red pigment
Object number: 1868.5
Charles E. Burchfield
Date: March 1916
Medium: Watercolor and graphite on paper
Object number: 2016.1.1
Charles E. Burchfield
Date: April 1, 1916
Medium: Watercolor and pencil on paper
Object number: 2016.1.2
William E. Williams
Date: 1981 (published 1985)
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Object number: 1992.1.2
Thomas Nast
Date: published January 24, 1863
Medium: Wood engraving on newsprint
Object number: 2019.13.28
Eadweard Muybridge
Date: c. 1884-87 (published 1887)
Medium: Collotype on paper, mounted on board
Object number: 2011.8.4