Ed Liberty Tattooing Cassius E. Church

Ed Liberty Tattooing Cassius E. Church
Unidentified photographer
Boston, c. 1929
Image courtesy of Lillian Liberty Castell

Ed Liberty created the largest and most complex work of his career on Cassius Ezra Church, an ex-Navy seaman who may have been preparing for a second career as a tattooed performer. Ed adorned Church’s chest and arms with patriotic and popular imagery. On Church’s back, Ed recreated a popular nineteenth-century genre painting of the Madonna and Child featuring billowing clouds and thirty-seven angels.