Description:
painting bears paper labels on verso, American Folk Art Gallery, New York and Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield Mass, oil on canvas, framed.
Label Text:
Detailed in the Book of Exodus, the plague of darkness was the ninth of ten plagues sent as a judgment by God against Egypt for not releasing the Israelites from slavery. Between 1865 and 1880 the deeply religious and passionately anti-slavery Erastus Salisbury Field depicted The Plagues of Egypt in a series of large canvases intended for display in the North Congregational Church of North Amherst, Massachusetts.
The "plague of darkness" involved a period of total darkness that lasted for three days, during which no one could see anyone else, according to the book of Exodus. The plague was a manifestation of God's power and a punishment for Pharaoh's refusal to release the Israelites.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2025.15 |
