Skip to main content
Advanced Search
2020.101.1,a&b, Painting
Lincoln (Emancipation Proclamation)
2020.101.1,a&b, Painting

Lincoln (Emancipation Proclamation)

Date2001
Maker Malcah Zeldis (b. 1931)
OriginAmerica, New York, New York City
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsOverall: 16 × 20in. (40.6 × 50.8cm)
Credit LineMuseum Purchase [This work is copyrighted. Please see Registrar before use.]
Object number2020.101.1,A&B
DescriptionPainted scene of Abraham Lincoln with the Emancipation Proclamation alongside a black man whose shackles are falling to the ground beside him. In the background are compiled landscapes of Lincoln’s childhood home, the White House and a soldier’s tent.
Label TextMalcah Zeldis was born Mildred Brightman on Spetember 22, 1931, in the Bronx, New York. Shortly after her birth, her family moved to Detroit, where her father worked as a window washer. In 1948, after graduating from high school, she went to live on a kibbutz in Israel. She met and married Hiram Zeldis, a writer who was also from Detroit and after a wedding in Detroit the couple returned to Israel.

In 1958, the Zeldises left Israel with her family and settled in New York. During the early 1970s, as her children grew older and her marriage floundered, she was admitted to Brooklyn College. She graduated in 1974, worked as a teacher's aide, obtained a divorce, and began to paint seriously.

Zeldis' artworks encompass social themes, celebrations, everyday events, religious events and practices, fairy tales, and portraits of her heroes and heroines. She often rapidly sketched her design and then painted in oil on canvas or board or in gouache or tempera on paper. Her paintings have been widely collected and exhibited, and she has illustrated several children's books.

Abraham Lincoln appears in several of Zeldis' artworks and is even the subject of a children's book which Zeldis illustrated. This canvas depicts the Emancipation Proclamation, a subject that Zeldis surely found impactful as it isthe center image of a large triptych owened by the American Folk Art Museum.
ProvenanceBefore 2020, purchased directly from the artist by Marcia Weber Art Objects (Wetumpka, Alabama); 2020, purchased by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (Williamsburg, VA)