MS01.01.03.B01.F25.029

3

Since there is no particular style or period delineation which
characterizes the works I have selected, I shall, for reasons of
clarity only, divide the works shown into four distinct categories:
(1) works done between the period 1700-1755, these I shall call
Pre-Revolutionary images, for the lack of a better term, (2) works
done between the period 1776-1800 will be called Post Revolutionary
images, (3) works done between the period 1861-1900 simply as
images of the late 19th century, inclusive of Civil War and Freedman
subjects. One could all but categorizes the subjects which occur in
the four time periods listed by citing the recurring themes which
white American artistis chose to depict in which blacks were the
principal subjects. The first paintings in which Blacks are depicted
show them as servants and slaves, noble savages, servant/war heroes
and gentlemen of color. As early as 1838, Blacks are seen as
entertainers of whites, servicing as musicians and comic capers. The
documentation of slave sales and slave market scenes, field scenes
depicting work esperiences as well as those sharing "the laziness
of the race," Blacks who serve to promote the sale of food, etc.,
are constant images that recur from time to time from 1840 until
the end of the Civil War.

For those of us who reside on the eastern seaboard, it is both
significant and interestingly curious that the earliest recorded
or known image of an American of African ancestry to be seen in an
American painting comes to us from the state of Maryland and
more specifically from an artist of German birth who adopted the young
town of Annapolis as his new home. [u]Justus Engelhardt Kühn [/u] is said