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Two men, a dog, and a horse gather at the wide opening to a barn-like building that fills this horizontal painting. A light-skinned, blond man in a tall, brimmed, straw hat leans with his ankles crossed and hands in pockets against the right side of the opening. His body faces us and he turns his gaze toward the man to our left, whose face is in profile. The blond man's knee-length, olive-green jacket has black lapels, and it hangs open to reveal a close-fitting, ivory-white vest over a white shirt with a sea-blue tie. His brown, calf-high boots have a band of brick red around the top. A slender, brown and white grayhound stands facing our left in profile with its front legs stiffly straight and its hindquarters pressing against the man’s right leg. The tanned, dark-haired man near the jamb to our left bends over to work on the underside of a horse’s hoof, which he holds between his knees with his left hand. He wears a loose red shirt with an open collar and rolled-up sleeves, over wrinkled brown pants. Short black locks emerge under the edges of his olive-green cap. A wooden box of tools, with a handle for carrying, sits on the dirt ground in front of him. The horse being shod, overlapped by the workman, faces into the barn and to our left, but its head, turning to our right, is silhouetted against a landscape visible through an open window at the back of the barn. The view is dotted with haystacks and framed by tree branches. A stirrup hangs on a strap flung over a saddle on the back of the horse, whose rump stands between the laborer and a woman, who is deep in shadow. Placing her right hand, on our left, on her hip, she appears in front of the grids of window panes. She seems to have pale skin and dark, loosely bound-up hair, and she looks toward the horse. Red flames flicker in a fireplace between her and the standing blond man. The front opening of the structure is protected by a shallow wooden portico, supported on the left by a slender, trimmed tree trunk with a ring hanging from a screw near the top. Curling red and yellow leaves are scattered on the long, narrow, wooden boards that form the porch roof. Sunlight dapples the barn wall to our left, and a square patch of light falls on the face of the wall to our right, near the ground. A broken plow lies on the ground to our right, with the wooden handle of a tool propped against it. A tuft of long dark hair, like a horse’s tail, hangs on the wall over the tools. Closer to the head of the standing man, a poster is printed with black on white paper. A running man carrying an hourglass and a scythe is enclosed in a thin circle, over the words, “STOP THEIF!!!” in capital letters, though “thief” is misspelled.

Leisure and Labor, 1858

Frank Blackwell Mayer

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 71

Gazing down at a blacksmith stooped over his work, an elegantly dressed man leans against a post. His graceful greyhound and the broken plow at his feet underscore his idleness. The poster behind him, which shows a grim reaper–like figure above the (misspelled) text “Stop Theif!!,” reminds us not to waste precious time.

Painted just before the Civil War, the scene may represent Northern scorn toward wealthy Southern landowners who bred greyhounds for sport and show. In political satires of the time, the dogs sometimes symbolized the Confederacy.

Dive deeper

This painting, completed just three years before the Civil War began, may be an expression of northern antipathy toward the landed gentry of the south. Leisure and Labor is the culmination of Mayer's decade-long exploration of the blacksmith theme. The bifurcated canvas juxtaposes a well-dressed man leaning casually on the right—hands tucked in his pockets and legs crossed—with an industrious and productive blacksmith hard at work on the left. A broken plow and graceful greyhound further underscore his leisure. The dog evokes breeding of animals for sport and show, an idle pursuit of Southern aristocracy during this period. During the war, the greyhound was one of the symbols of the Confederacy in anti-Southern political satires. The moral lesson is further communicated by the white poster on the right which depicts a man (who resembles the Grim Reaper) running with scythe in hand above the misspelled text "Stop Theif!" reminding the viewer that time is precious and not to be wasted.

Mayer, a Maryland artist renowned for his historical subjects and genre scenes, remained publicly ambivalent about the Civil War. After its outbreak, he traveled to Paris, as did two of the most important American collectors of the 19th century: William T. Walters, who commissioned Leisure and Labor and who later founded the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, and William Wilson Corcoran, who purchased the painting in 1859 and who later founded the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Both collectors were known Southern sympathizers.

Object Data

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 39.53 × 57.94 cm (15 9/16 × 22 13/16 in.)

framed: 56.83 × 78.11 × 10.16 cm (22 3/8 × 30 3/4 × 4 in.)

Credit Line

Corcoran Collection (Gift of William Wilson Corcoran)

Accession Number

2014.136.111

Artists / Makers

Frank Blackwell Mayer (artist) American, 1827 - 1899

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Detail Information

Provenance

Purchased 1859 from the artist by William Wilson Corcoran [1798-1888], Washington; gift 10 May 1869 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.

Associated Names

Corcoran Gallery of Art
Corcoran, William Wilson

Exhibition History

1859: Third Annual Exhibition of the Washington Art Association, 1859, no. 30.

1859: Thirty-sixth Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, April - June 1859, no. 180.

1939: Life in America: A Special Loan Exhibition of Paintings Held During the Period of the New York World's Fair, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 24 April - 29 October 1939, no. 157.

1940: A Souvenir of Romanticism in Ameria; or, An Elegant Exposition of Taste and Fashion from 1812 to 1865, Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 May - 10 June 1940, unnumbered checklist.

1952: Man at Work, Denver Art Museum, 2 March - 27 April 1952, no checklist.

1960: American Painters of the South, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 23 April - 5 June 1960, no. 123.

1963: A Century and a Half of American Painting, Dulin Gallery of Art, Knoxville, 3 April - 13 May 1963, no. 8.

1966: Past and Present: 250 Years of American Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 15 April - 30 September 1966, unpublished checklist.

1971: Extended loan for use by the U.S. Embassy, Moscow, 1971-1973.

1976: Corcoran [The American Genius], Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 24 January - 4 April 1976, no checklist.

1981: Of Time and Place: American Figurative Art from the Corcoran Gallery, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; Cincinnati Art Museum; San Diego Museum of Art; University of Kentucky Art Museum, Lexington; Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga; Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa; Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Des Moines Art Center; Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida, 1981-1983, no. 6.

1984: 350 Years of Art & Architecture in Maryland, Art Gallery and the Gallery of the School of Architecture, University of Maryland, College Park, 26 October - 1 December 1984, no. 27.

1993: The Century Club Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 21 July - 13 September 1993, unpublished checklist.

2003: Old Virginia: The Pursuit of a Pastoral Ideal, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, 8 February - 8 June 2003, no checklist.

2004: Figuratively Speaking: The Human Form in American Art 1770-1950, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 20 November 2004-7 August 2005, unpublished checklist.

2005: Encouraging American Genius: Master Paintings from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY; Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte; John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, 2005-2007, checklist no. 29.

2008: The American Evolution: A History through Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1 March - 27 July 2008, unpublished checklist.

2013: American Journeys: Visions of Place, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 21 September 2013 - 28 September 2014, unpublished checklist.

Bibliography

2011: Shapiro, Emily Dana. "Frank Blackwell Mayer, Leisure and Labor." In Corcoran Gallery of Art: American Paintings to 1945. Edited by Sarah Cash. Washington, 2011: 20, 118-119, 264, repro.