Legacy of Enslavement Cambridge University report so far

 Advisory Group on Legacies of Enslavement final report | University of Cambridge

Cambridge Legacies of Enslavement

who is the boy? [10]

this boy is fairly familiar, given that he was painted by the very famous Van Dyck  and has been on view at much-visited Kenwood House since the Iveagh collection was opened to the public.

A good deal is known about his companion, Henrietta of Lorraine, ill-fated and really quite  obscure.  Nothing about the boy, who is simply assumed to be an accessory in a proud resplendent portrait that 'evokes wealth and nobility' in despite of Henrietta's insecure and at times backstabbing life.

The inequities of scale are striking, for if Henrietta's hand on the boy's shoulder were actual, he would be about the height of a large dog, whereas his aspect and posture, proffering a dish of pink roses in homage to her European complexion, suggest a teenager.  The effect of course is to increase Henrietta's pictorial and social stature, although as the boy is clearly as fictive as his flowers, this does not signify much; it was standard in European portraiture.

However, there were very many young Black men and women in European courts from the 1400-1600s.  As we would like to know about them, it is a pity that when they were employed as artist's models they were seldom if ever identified.

 

Who is the boy? [9]

Laurens Alma Tadema,  Head study, c1858, Walters AG Baltimore

 

the model for this fairly roughly painted study was presumably a young man in Antwerp, there the artist studied and worked in the late 1850s.  He wears a black shirt under a dark brown coat and a fur or rather wool-trimmed cap. An unlocated companion work depicting a profile head of the same sitter shows the cap was  leather-crowned, with the deep astrakhan brim seen full face here and standing in for the boy's [presumed] dark curly hair.  Presumed also a boy, because clean-shaven, although he might be quite a bit older.  And presumed of African ancestry owing to his dark skin, and warm coat and cap against European winter.   Therefore presumed to have been a seafarer,  moonlighting it were in Antwerp between sailings.

But he could have been born anywhere from the Caribbean to Indonesia, and a permanent resident in Antwerp's busy entrepot.  His abstracted expression suggests that the arftist was chiefly concerned with the work as a study in dark tones rather than portraiture, although the lad's static features are enlivened by the reflected lights on nose and lip.

Whatever, Alma Tadema was sufficiently pleased with both his studies of the unnamed model to take them with him when he moved to Britain, and keep them in his studio there.

who is the boy? [8]

D G Rossetti, study of sleeping youth 1867 BMAG

One African boy about which some fragmentary information is known is the sleeping child Rossetti added to his watercolour versions of the Return of Tibullus to Delia in the 1860s.

He was  not, as has been supposed, the same lad who modelled for the Black child in Rossetti's Beloved of 1865.  But a ship's boy recruited from the Sailors' Home or hostel in London's docklands.  This was in same are as the the animal merchant Jamrach, from where Rossetti purchased his wombat and other creatures for his garden menagerie.

According to Harry Dunn, Rossetti's studio assistant, when DGR thought to introduce a house slave supposed to be guarding the threshold of Delia's Roman house, 'it was a puzzle where to find a regular little Nubian.'   [Nubian being the preferred Victorian term for 'Black African' when the Nword wasn't used.] 

Dunn, whose recollections are only partly reliable, then accompanied Rossetti to Whitechapel. 'Down many squalid streets we traversed and at last found ourselves in one broad thoroughfare  abounding with ships drawn up close to shore, their bowsprits overlapping into the roadway.   A  motley crowd of sailors of all nations and garbs and tongue thronged the place;  through this miscellaneous melee we passed until the Home was reached, and at last our search was rewarded by finding exactly the lad who was required;  and with explanations to the object of our mission, it was arranged that the little fellow should make his appearance at Cheyne Walk the following  day.

'The little Nubian came the next day, but as Rossetti remarked, he was so dusky that you could see his clothes moving about, but not the boy'.[H T Dunn Recollections 1984, 32-3]

The lad's near-invisibility perhaps owed more to the curtained gloom within the studio, and the poor eyesight that soon threatened the artist's livelihood, than to the tone of his skin, but does indicate his African origin.

It also contributed to his near-invisibility in the two coloured versions of the subject, one of which recently sold for £100k in London.

DG Rossetti, The Return of Tibullus to Delia, watercolour, 1868, Sothebys July 2022

Look carefully and Tibullus is stepping over his sleeping form.  [The brighter hues here in the 1867 version below are from the reproduction not the original] 

D G Rossetti, Return of Tibullus to Delia, watercolour 1867, unlocated

Who is the boy? [7]

John Ritchie Winter, St James Park London, 1858

 I've often wondered about this picture of Londoners on the frozen lake in St James' Park, and used it as an example of Victorian artists including a token Black figure in crowd scenes to convey urban  diversity.  The lad in the centre, skating so fast or inexpertly that he is about to crash behind the group of urchins, is well dressed in some kind of livery and top hat, so must be intended as a young footman who has escaped his household duties for the day. Were such servants still common in the 1850s, or is the artist alluding to an earlier social habit, when it was fashionable to have a [pair of] handsome Africans answering the front door and riding pillion on the family coach?

Ritchie (1828-1905) mostly concentrated  on genre scenes as far as I can judge, but no more Black figures are visible in his known works - not even in the companion piece to Winter in St James' Park, Summer in Hyde Park, where all the picknicking and fishing characters are white.    

Who is the boy? [6]

Peter Lely, Elizabeth Murray Countess Dysart c1651, Ham House

This is a series that could run and run  and one can be forgiven for seeing the unnamed African attendants as mere accessories - animate companions to the fruit and flowers they typically hold.

It's clear from the composition of the portrait of Elizabeth Murray that the artist intended no relationship between her ladyship and the attendant; despite reaching for a rose on his proffered plate, she does not acknowledge his presence any more than she would a table.

His eyes, on the other hand, are anxiously fixed on her face, as if to see his service is approved.  Pictorially it works, to affirm  for the viewer her superior status and beauty - white skin, blonde ringlets, sumptuous silk and satin garments.

the suspicion that this is a stock figure for pictorial not biographical purposes is supported by a young fellow in another formal portrait by Lely [or his studio], where the lad reaches for orange blossoms and Lady Elizabeth remains impassive. Obviously, her portrait is the purpose of the image and she'd probably be depicted in much the same manner if her companion were her husband or child. These are not depictions  of daily life and the details are all conventional. 

Peter Lely, Elizabeth Wriothesley Lady Noel c 1660s, Petworth

 Nonetheless,  there will have been African boys whom the artists in order to include them in the picture - no doubt for various canvases in this period.  Their identities remain unknown and unknowable, but the critical mass of their images indicates a substantial presence

 

Who is the boy? [5]

Wenceslaus Hollar, profile head of boy, 1635, FAM SF

One frequently reproduced image is this, of an unnamed  young servant, etched by Hollar perhaps to advertise skill in shading.    Hollar's output was prodigious, so the date  on this impression 1635 is the only clue to further information.  Born in  Prague in 1607, after his father's death in 1630 Hollar travelled and worked in Germany and Flanders before joining the Earl of Arundel's entourage and moving to Britain.  

If the portrait was executed in 1635, it was probably drawn in Antwerp from a boy employed in a Flemish household.  A decade later, Hollar was again in the city, as a Royalist exile, seeking work where he could find it, and another impression was produced, with the date 1645.  A good number of prints are known, with and without dates.

Wenceslaus Hollar, profile head of boy, 1645

Hollar returned to England in 1652, where he worked for Charles II and died in 1677.  Around 1683 a mezzotint copy or spin-off was produced, depicting the sitter in reversed pose, with the added accessory of an ear ring. By which time, if still living, the nameless boy would have been in his sixties.

after Wenceslaus Hollar, NPG  D11877

D

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