Gwathmey didn't stick around Richmond. After several years in Philadelphia, he took up residence in New York, where he painted, taught art and had a family. He died in 1988. Despite Gwathmey's politics, his art was not didactic. He did not like to talk about his paintings and he described himself merely as an observer.
Serenity prevails more often than sadness, however.
We need not brace ourselves for shock. Instead we encounter dignity without sentimentalism, empathy rather than pity, biting satire without revulsion, and compassion rather than romanticism. Caste and class remained very much on the mind of the native Richmonder. In Gwathmey's vision of life in the United States, progress' had been for the few and the privileged, not for the masses and the minorities. Gwathmey gave his toiling men and women dignity, but he did not glorify them.