The Pipe of Freedom

It is a three-quarter length portrait of a black man lighting a pipe of tobacco.

He is standing bareheaded, wearing dark trousers with a leather belt, a white shirt with a white cloth tied around this neck, and a red cloak with black and gold details draped over his shoulders.

He is standing in front of a brick wall, to which are pasted the remains of several posters, including a yellow poster referring to a slave auction, over which is pasted a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation – "all persons held as slaves within any State ... shall be then, thenceforward and forever free", which came into effect in areas occupied by the Union from January 1, 1863, and was implemented across the southern states of the US in December 1865, after the Union defeated the Confederacy in the American Civil War.

The subject was unusual at the time, when it would be usual to depict black people in subservient roles, for example as servants.

The other, Fellah of Kinneh, was exhibited unobtrusively, but The Pipe of Freedom was rejected (on political grounds, Smith claimed).