As yet I don't know much more about the programme, except that I am participating. But it's worth noting that the re-hang includes a seldom [never?] previously seen painting by William Blake Richmond of a distraught woman and naked infant in some kind of prison, entitled The Slave. When curating Black Victorians, I viewed this painting for possible inclusion but in the reserve store it was just too dark, literally black all over for anything to be visible. It is better on display but still aesthetically unattractive, chiefly owing to the murky paint for the flesh tones, and the obtrusive glimpse of something that I took to be a breast but a friend observes may be some part of the babe largely concealed by the voluminous black cloak. Then it's hard to understand what the artist intended in terms of meaning. What era is this supposed to be? what location? it looks like an 18th-century prison cell with straw on the floor, except that it's timber-built and so more like a stable. Possibly it is meant to represent a 'slave pen' where enslaved people were kept awaiting sale in the American South. In which case Richmond was about twenty-five years out of date; such subjects were familiar - indeed popular in a macabre way - in British painting when the Emancipation struggle and US Civil War were in progress. I wonder if perhaps the painting was actually executed then? If so, Fanny Eaton could have been the model - the anguished features are not dissimilar to hers, and Richmond was friendly with several other artists who employed her.He is also an under-researched artist, so further investigation might be useful.
Current details of The Black Subject seminar info here
I have never seen this painting before and find it very interesting. I do agree the model looks very, very like Fanny Eaton.
ReplyDeleteI think you must be right that it was done at a time when slavery was being excoriated - to me at any rate it has an air of preaching to the converted rather than challenging norms.
I will say though that perhaps the most chilling phrase you come across in legal documents relating to slavery, such as wills, is not just when groups of people are disposed of as property but when individual women are named, usually accompanied with the phrase "and her increase". In other words if the trafficked woman happens to be pregnant then even her unborn child is covered by the transaction, as are any future babies.
I think the artist here may well have been trying to draw attention to this most inhuman aspect. This mother has a child at the breast, another just walking and possibly a third in the womb. (Perhaps the clasped arms of the elder child are emphasising this possibility?)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete