Missouri Courtroom

William Josiah Brickey, born Potosi, MO 1826-died New Orleans, LA 1853 · 1852

The participants in this courtroom scene focus their attention on a fair-skinned man dressed in rags, possibly one of the thousands of Irish immigrants who had escaped the potato famine and made their way to Missouri. These farmers settled in urban areas where they hired out as day laborers, struggling to get by with little income and no property of their own. (Parrish, gen. ed., A History of Missouri, vol. II, 1972) The men who sit in judgment are clearly more prosperous, and this painting evokes the mixed welcome that generations of European immigrants experienced in nineteenth-century America.