The Lord is My Shepherd (Eastman Johnson) He is sitting against a blue jacket, which may indicate service in the Union army. President Abraham Lincoln had recently authorized organization of the United States Colored Troops. This is one of several works by Eastman Johnson with African-American subjects. The Lord is My Shepherd (Eastman Johnson) The Lord is My Shepherd is an 1863 oil on wood painting by American artist Eastman Johnson. The painting measures 16 5/8 x 13 1/8 in. (42.3 x 33.2 cm.) and is on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The title of the painting comes from Psalm 23, which begins with the
Psalm 151 text of this psalm to be in places “desiccated”, “meaningless”, “truncated”, “ridiculous”, “absurd”, “jumbled”, and “disappointingly different”, all this the result of its having been “made from a truncated amalgamation of the two Hebrew psalms”. On details of translation, structure, and meaning of this psalm see especially the works of Skehan, Brownlee, Carmignac, Strugnell, Rabinowitz, Dupont-Sommer, and Flint. The title of the psalm states that it was written by David after his battle with Goliath. The psalm assumes familiarity with and draws ideas and phraseology from elsewhere in the Bible. <poem> I was small among my brothers, I tended my