Assigning Meaning: Images of Race in Art from the Age of Exploration by Mueller, Amanda

Bélizaire and the Frey Children (c. 1837)

amandamueller2_2 — 2024-04-29 22:37:30 UTC

This c. 1837 painting, attributed to renowned portraitist Jacques Guillame Lucien Amans, depicts the children of Frederick Frey, a wealthy resident of New Orleans. The portrait also includes Frey’s enslaved house servant, Bélizaire, 15 at the time his likeness was captured.

That Bélizaire was included in the composition might say something about his significance to the family, and he may very well have been valued as a companion to the Frey children, but the portrait also tells us he was not truly a part of this household—he was not considered a part of this family. His positioning, behind and to the side of the Frey children, looking on as they command center stage, reveals to us what his place was. Might this painting be considered part of the "identifiable European individual with an attendant black African figure" trope, as described by art historian Paul H.D. Kaplan in "The Image of the Black in Western Art, Volume III"? That author places the trend between the 1520s and as late as the 19th century; thus I’m inclined to say yes.[1]

Tragically, none of the Frey children survived to adulthood; all dying within a few years of the painting's completion. It’s ironic that Bélizaire outlived the Freys, as sort of reverse took place with the images in this portrait: the children remained, unchanging over the decades, while at some point (presumed late 19^th or early 20^th century, while the work was still in the hands of Frey family descendants), Bélizaire was…intentionally…painted…over. What was once likely considered a status symbol: the depiction of an enslaved person, a Black person, in the background of a family portrait became, over time…unseemly. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that Bélizaire was rediscovered and painstakingly brought back to light by conservators, the portrait’s history was excavated, and Bélizaire and the children were identified.A tiny bit of justice is served in the contemporary retitling of the painting, giving Bélizaire’s name pride of place.

This painting, today, tells viewers a story of tragedy, erasure and rediscovery, race, and changing social norms. To see a before-and-after-conservation image, and to learn more, visit the Ogden Museum of Southern Art’s website.

[1] Kaplan, Paul H. D. "2. Italy, 1490–1700." In The Image of the Black in Western Art, Volume III: From the “Age of Discovery” to the Age of Abolition, Part 1: Artists of the Renaissance and Baroque, edited by David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates Jr.. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010. Accessed May 4, 2024. https://aaeportal-com.libproxy.wustl.edu/?id=-17066#A-17066_85.

Medallion (c. 1787)

amandamueller2_2 — 2024-04-30 22:34:45 UTC

The American Philosophical Society is the oldest society of learning in the U.S.; it was founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin under the charge of “promoting useful knowledge.” Its museum collection includes this piece, an anti-slavery medallion modeled for Wedgwood (a company that produces fine china, porcelain, and other luxury objects) by artist William Hackwood and likely owned by Franklin, himself. The medallion depicts an enslaved man kneeling on the ground and raising his hands and face in supplication. The legend “AM I NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER” arcs the top of the circle.

The museum’s label copy tells us that a package of these medallions was sent to Benjamin Franklin by Josiah Wedgwood, founder of the eponymous company and member of the Society for the Suppression of the Slave Trade. In class this semester, we’ve learned that abolitionists had many motivations for wanting to end the slave trade, not all of them noble or even sympathetic, and many abolitionists still saw African, African American, and other nonwhite people as less-than. But the words at the top of this medallion encourage me to think that Wedgwood and Franklin, himself a “fervent abolitionist,” were at the very least not solely devoted to abolitionism for the sake of commerce, and that they acknowledged that enslaved people were, in fact, fellow humans. Further, the Library of Congress article on Franklin shares: “As president of the Pennsylvania anti-slavery society, Franklin appealed for public support of a humanitarian plan to not only emancipate slaves, but to educate free blacks and their children and to facilitate their progress toward good citizenship.”

Medallions like this one would have been worn to promote the message of abolition and appeal to the reason of sympathetic minds on both sides of the Atlantic. But there are questions to be asked: is the Black man depicted pleading with slave owners, abolitionists, or with God? Are the words a plaintive question or a challenging demand? The man is well-proportioned, and his features are not an exaggerated caricature, but he’s nonetheless depicted almost nude, and in a submissive, nonthreatening pose. Is he truly an equal, merely in need of unshackling in order to assume his rightful place in Western society, or did Hackwood, Wedgwood, Franklin, and others not truly see enslaved people as peers?

Young Indian (1827)

amandamueller2_2 — 2024-05-01 23:11:36 UTC

I chose this watercolor not because of the subject’s appearance, nor because of the history (or opinions on race) of the artist, Ruchard Bonington, a British painter of the Romantic school who died tragically young. The painting, found in the collection of the Louvre in Paris, is included here due to the way its title shifted in the years after it was created, and what those changes say about perceptions of race in the early 19^th century.

The subject of this painting is an odalisque, or an enslaved woman used as a concubine, usually part of a harem. Odalisque images were popular in the 1800s; the women depicted in them were usually shown in various states of undress, sensually splayed out for the male gaze. Uncertainty regarding the reading of this woman’s racial makeup, just whom the artist intended to depict, led to the image being retitled several times: first christened with the non-racialized Odalisque with Palm Trees, then an 1829 engraving of the piece dubbed it Le Jeune Afrique (The African Daughter), and next, the same year, the watercolor was labeled Young Indian. Through those titles, we learn it was important to at least some viewers that the subject of this composition be categorized. Because the woman’s skin is an ambiguous tone, we can assume her race was assigned through the filter of her namers’ cultural perceptions. Who were those men most willing to objectify and sexualize? Bonington had died by the time his painting’s identification started shifting, so he couldn’t clarify, though art historian Patrick Noon suggests that the style of the odalisque’s necklace indicates that she was meant to be Incan, and that this image was a fantastical imagining inspired by the news of the recent liberation of Peru, in 1821.

Bust of a Man (1758)

amandamueller2_2 — 2024-05-04 19:26:22 UTC

What describing words come you mind when gazing at British sculptor Francis Harwood’s (1726-1783) Bust of a Man? Strong? Regal? Stoic? Black? We don’t know why this 1758 bust was made was made, and for whom, but those who encounter it at LA’s J. Paul Getty Museum remember it—it’s hard to miss, juxtaposed against so many images of whiteness in the Museum’s art of the 18^th century. We also don’t know whom the sculpture portrays—it was shaped during the peak of the transatlantic slave trade, so may it’s an idealized image of an enslaved African, but there were also many free men of color living in Italy, where the expat Harwood homed his workshop—it may have been a personalized image of someone familiar. It seems very thoughtfully, even lovingly crafted—he's expressive, and looks as if he might have a voice. Was the subject someone dear to Harwood, or was the artist merely taking care and pride in his ability, showing his skill, for a particularly close or wealthy client? Is this man unclothed due to the neoclassical style of the work, or because a white artist was interpreting his idea of the “naked savage”? Does it change one’s interpretation of the piece if they learn that the bust’s original coating was a medium brown, not an essentializing, glossy black? Why do you think the color might have been changed? Scholars Cyra Levinson, Chi-Ming yang, and Ken Conzalez-Day urge us to “address the construction of racial identities and racism in these eighteenth-century busts that continue to resonate in our present moment. How might we avoid the tendencies to fragment, scrutinize, and objectify the black body?”[1]

Today, on the label next to its pedestal, the sculpture is titled Bust of a Man, but that’s a title grated it by the Getty in 1990, as sensitivity in naming and display of Black imagery in museums was heating up. In other recent history, it had borne such varied appellations as “Psyche” (the name of a servant to the Duke of Northumberland in the late 19^th/early 20^th century, thus impossible as the actual 18^th-cent. subject of the bust), “Bust of a Negro” (1987), “Bust of a Blackman” (also ’87), “Property of a Gentleman,” (date unknown), and Bust of a Black Man (1988). What do those titles say about shifting attitudes on race in the late 20^th century? This object clearly remains relevant, and important, to modern and contemporary conversations.

There is so much more fascinating backstory to Bust of a Man, and not nearly enough space to write about it. I highly recommend visiting this essay, from the journal British Art Studies, Nov. 2015.

[1] Cyra Levenson, Chi-ming Yang, Ken Gonzales-Day, "Haptic Blackness: The Double Life of an 18th-century Bust", British Art Studies, Issue 1, https://doi.org/10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-01/harwood

Taste in High Life (1742)

amandamueller2_2 — 2024-05-04 22:36:30 UTC

This painting by satirist William Hogarth (1697-1764) was commissioned in 1742 by wealthy heiress Mary Edwards. It’s a caricature of the fashionable elite in England, and features several snide, visual comments on the fashion and foibles of the time. It’s said that Edwards, reportedly the richest woman in England at the time, had the picture made as a sort of rebuttal to those in upper crust society who mocked her more old-fashioned dress. Etchings (copies) of the work, many made without Hogarth’s permission, can be found in museum collections throughout the world—see here for an example.

The composition includes an enslaved African or British African boy dressed in the “oriental style;” it is this character that I will focus on for this entry.* Further exoticizing people who were already made so by white British slaveholders would have been both a comment on owners’ status (that they were worldly and fashionable), and on their wealth (they could afford to dress even their servants richly, and in the latest style). The image of the boy further comments on exoticism of the other in that he is depicted holding a figurine of a Chinese man—both the figurine and the teacup that the painting’s centered figures are fawning over reflects rage for collecting imported porcelain and other “chinoiserie” (Chinese and Chinese-styled) objects.

This painting is not currently in a museum collection, but it might be soon. In a complication for this painting’s provenance, an attempt to sell the work in an auction in 2023 was blocked by England. The Minister of Arts and Hertiage has placed an export bar on the Hogarth “to allow time for a UK gallery or institution to acquire the painting for the nation.”[1] The deferral period was slated to end in March of 2024; further news or a buyer has yet to be announced.

What do you think about the value of this painting to the cultural heritage of England. If you were to write the label or exhibition copy for the piece, what would you say? Some institutions’ labels for the print version of this painting gloss over the status of the enslaved boy altogether; others call him out specifically and ask the hard questions. Still others simply refer to him as a “servant.” Those differing descriptions tell us that there is still much to address in depictions of enslaved Black people in museum collections.

* For more information about the other images that make up this composition, and the subtext of the various elements in the painting, see here or google the author name and painting title—there is a wealth of information on those topics.

[1] Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay. “William Hogarth’s Satirical Painting ‘taste in High Life’ at Risk of Leaving the UK.” GOV.UK, November 15, 2023. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/william-hogarths-satirical-painting-taste-in-high-life-at-risk-of-leaving-the-uk.