The Lord is My Shepherd (Eastman Johnson) 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 line: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want." Johnson painted it just after the Emancipation Proclamation was announced in 1863. Its imagery includes an African-American man reading the first part of a Bible, possibly the Book of Exodus.
Psalm 23 English was made in 1565 by Thomas Sternhold. Other metrical versions to emerge from the Protestant Reformation include those from "The Bay Psalm Book" (1640) and a version influenced by Sternholm published in the Scottish Psalter (1650). The latter version is still encountered, with modernized spelling, in many Protestant hymns. Other notable metrical versions include those by George Herbert, Philip Sidney, and Isaac Watts. A metrical version of the psalm is traditionally sung to the hymn tune "Crimond", generally attributed to Jessie Seymour Irvine. This version, with its opening words "The Lord's My Shepherd", is probably the best-known amongst English-speaking