Born in Kentucky and raised in West Virginia, Anshutz moved with his family to Brooklyn in 1871. During that turbulent, post-Civil War decade, a number of artists painted images of African American life. Here, Anshutz
portrays a woman and two children caring for their arid vegetable garden. The mountain setting suggests the painting may have been based on a scene the artist observed in his travels around Wheeling, West Virginia.
The aestheticized lushness of the regional flora is in stark contrast to the impoverished living conditions and grim demeanor of the woman, suggesting that little had changed for emancipated Blacks in Reconstruction-era
America. The artist’s original title, "The Way They Live," underlines the distance between the presumed White middle-class viewer and the laboring subject. The painting was later referred to with more generic titles,
"The Cabbage Patch" or "Way Down South."
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