The Power of Music! reproduces William Sidney Mount’s 1847 canvas of the same name, picturing an African American man standing beside an open barn door, discreetly listening to the musical performance of a young Anglo-American violinist within. Although spatially segregated from the other men, he appears to listen with the greatest intensity. Though Mount’s frequent depictions of African Americans are sensitive and devoid of caricature, the artist’s personal views on matters of racial equality were notoriously complex and occasionally contradictory. He commented that “a Negro is as good as a White man—as long as he behaves himself,” but he is known to have held the blacks who worked on his family’s farm—all former slaves—in high esteem.