MS01.01.03.B01.F25.004
Facsimile
Transcription
the local townspeople. One of his first assignments at the easel
was that of portraying the likeness of Eleanor Darnell and that of
her brother Henry. (SLIDE NO. 1) [underline]The Portrait of Henry Darnell, III [/underline] was painted around 1710. It is executed in
oil and is on a canvas which measures approximately 54" x 44". The principal subject in
the painting is the young Henry at the tender age of eight. The
well dressed youngster stands straight and tall against a background
of palaces and gardens that would rival Versailles. These props were obviously
imagined by the artist as an important incentive of class [crossed out:
but] and perhaps
equally so a selling tool for the have-nots who dreamed of such luxury
and splendor since no such dwellings yet existed in America at that time. [crossed out: But] Thus our interest turns from the young Henry, who
was later to become the Collector of Customs for the Potomac and
Reciever of Revenues for Lord Baltimore, to the portrait of his
faithful, though nameless Black servant. He is a young man of some
years perhaps beyond Henry. The black servant, our first recorded
image of a Black person in an American painting, is also well dressed
and wears those garments that are normally associated with servants
who attend to the affairs of the house, not those of the field. Kuehn
does not reveal to us the exact height of the servant but places
him behind the figure of the young master clutching with one hand
the partridge no doubt felled by the arrow of the well dressed Darnell
youngster. We are certain that the figure of the black servant
was not meant by the artist to be a subject of equal importance as
that of Henry Darnell but it becomes a celebrated image for two
reasons: it is an early portrayal of the role of the black man in
the alien society and it romanticizes an idea about pre-revolutionary
life in Colonial America.
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