{"id":2102,"date":"2009-10-15T20:04:12","date_gmt":"2009-10-15T20:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=2102"},"modified":"2013-09-15T18:20:40","modified_gmt":"2013-09-15T18:20:40","slug":"thomas-satterwhite-nobles-mulattos-from-barefoot-madonna-to-maggie-the-ripper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=2102","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Satterwhite Noble’s Mulattos: From Barefoot Madonna to Maggie the Ripper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thomas Satterwhite Noble’s Mulattos: From Barefoot Madonna to Maggie the Ripper<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Journal of American Studies<\/a>
\nVolume 41, Issue 1<\/a> (April 2007)
\npages 83-114
\nDOI: 10.1017\/S0021875806002763<\/a><\/p>\n

Jo-Ann Morgan<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor of Art History and\u00a0African American Studies
\nWestern Illinois\u00a0University<\/em><\/p>\n

With emancipation a fait accompli<\/a> by 1865, one might ask why Kentucky<\/a>-born Thomas Satterwhite Noble<\/a> (1835\u20131907), former Confederate<\/a> soldier, son of a border state slaveholder, began painting slaves then. Noble had known the \u201cpeculiar institution\u201d at first hand, albeit from a privileged position within the master class. As a result, his choice to embark upon a career as a painter using historical incidents from slavery makes for an interesting study. Were the paintings a way of atoning for his Confederate culpability, a rebel pounding his sword into a paintbrush to appease the conquering North<\/a>? Or was he capitalizing on his unique geographic perspective as a scion of slave-trafficking Frankfort, Kentucky<\/a>, soon to head a prestigious art school in Cincinnati, the city where so many runaways first tasted freedom? Between 1865 and 1869 Noble exhibited in northern cities a total of eight paintings with African American subjects. Two of these, The Last Sale of Slaves in St. Louis<\/em> (1865, repainted ca. 1870) and Margaret Garner<\/em> (1867), featured mixed-race women, or mulattos<\/a>, as they had come to be called. From a young female up for auction, to the famous fugitive Margaret Garner<\/a>, his portrayals show a transformation taking place within perceptions of biracial women in post-emancipation America. Opinions about mulattos surfaced in a range of theoretical discussions, from the scientific to the political, as strategists North and South envisioned evolving social policy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nMargaret Garner<\/a> or The Modern Medea (1867)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas Satterwhite Noble’s Mulattos: From Barefoot Madonna to Maggie the Ripper Journal of American Studies Volume 41, Issue 1 (April 2007) pages 83-114 DOI: 10.1017\/S0021875806002763 Jo-Ann Morgan, Associate Professor of Art History and\u00a0African American Studies Western Illinois\u00a0University With emancipation a fait accompli by 1865, one might ask why Kentucky-born Thomas Satterwhite Noble (1835\u20131907), former Confederate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,459,8,6940,20,25],"tags":[494,496,495,497,213,493],"class_list":["post-2102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-history","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-usa","category-women","tag-jo-ann-morgan","tag-journal-of-american-studies","tag-kentucky","tag-margaret-garner","tag-mulatta","tag-thomas-satterwhite-noble"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}