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America's visual artists and recognized the contributions they made to the development and perpetuation of images without honor to any race. This brief overview of the subject is by no means a comprehensive study of the subject of race in American art nor is it meant to be a sociological analysis, instead, it brings to our attention a view of how American artists saw Blacks, first as exotica, in the manner that some European artists saw them though seldom as personalities. Secondly, they were depicted as picturesque creatures who loved music, fun and dance and regarded their own state of life as being a part of God's will. This notion they learned through the teaching of Christian principles. In the mid 19th century there developed a sentimental attitude among genre painters who even saw poverty and the deprived conditions under which most Blacks lived as a picturesque theme worthy of the pen of a gentleman but, not one which spoke of the illness of the prevailing social order. Such attitude about black life prevailed among majority culture artists of all media; writers, filmmakers, radio and popular media, including visual artists until the mid 20th century. It is only in recent years that one notes a drastic change among mainstream visual artists in their portrayal of a more positive treatment of the Black image in American art.
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THE BLACK IMAGE IN AMERICAN PAINTNG 1700-1900: [crossed out: A SELECT SURVEY] NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE
The image of the Black personage in Western art has in recent years gained the interest and scholarly attention of some of Europe, America and Africa's most distinguished scholars. I recall the informative and instructive lectures on the subject delivered by the pre-eminent artist/historian James A. Porter, a teacher at Howard University when in 1951, he stood before a small class of us fledging pupils newly enrolled as potential arts and humanities scholars, telling of the glorious and triumphant history of the peoples of African ancestry throughout the world. Porter enriched our lives with stories of black heroes other than those we knew that fitted within the bounds of our own American heritage. He, along with other great Howard University teachers of the time-- Leo Hansberry, Alaine Locke and Frank M. Snowden, Jr. to mention a few, talked of the glories of our ancient African past. They planted within us the desire to learn more about the image of ourselves and that of our ancestors in courses of study later to be characterized as Black Studies.
More specifically, we were challenged by these scholars to seek out the pages of the compendia of American history to see the image of the black man in American art and learn the sociological as well as the broad cultural definitions images bear. These men, Porter, Hansberry, Locke and Snowden, noted the contraditions that mainstream American art presented when the images of Blacks were made. Though they were objective in their thinking, these scholars were quick to point out to us that few artists, during the post revolutionary era
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and during the period of slavery in America, sought to portray the black man's image in a manner which showed human dignity and the rampant ills of the societal order. But such advanced thinking was not readily had among 18th and 19th century Americans as most artists during the post colonial period and during the first half of the 19th century were white mainstream Americans who depicted Blacks in any form other than one of dignity and often portrayed them in a rather romantic way implicitly inclusive of the notion of savagery and servitude.
Unfortunately, it was a commonly held notion, one believed to have been copies from the popular literature of the time, that Blacks, during the colonial experience, throughout slavery, into the Abolitionist movement and immediately following Emancipation, should be looked upon and thusly portrayed in the visual arts, as being the zestful primitive, the happy slave or the tragic mulatto. This attitude led to the presentation of a negative image of Blacks in the popular media such as cards, books, posters, kitchen accessories, racing ads and other sales popular objects. Though many American artists sought to portray Blacks as important subjects experienced in the American scene, the less humanely concerned artists found them bountiful subjects for ridicule and for the creation of stereotypic images. [First Series of Pre-Slides]
It is noteworthy to explain that very few images of Blacks appeared in sculpture other than in folk forms from 1700 to 1900 and those who have survived until today were often made to show exaggerated black features thus creating an unfavorable and grotesque-like characterization of all Blacks. Since there are many examples to be seen in painting, I have chosen to concentrate on those black images that are available in this popular medium.
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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
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to have settled in Annapolis just prior to the end of the year 1708. There he set up studio and made known his desire to paint likenesses of 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) [u]The Portrait of Henry Darnell, III[/u] was painted around 1710. It is executed in oil and is on a canvas which measures approximately 54" and 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 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. Thus, our interest turns from the young Henry, who was later to become the Collector of Customs for the Potomac and Receiver 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