{"id":50328,"date":"2016-11-29T01:35:28","date_gmt":"2016-11-29T01:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=50328"},"modified":"2017-02-21T01:15:01","modified_gmt":"2017-02-21T01:15:01","slug":"pink-and-the-fancy-gal-white-slavery-the-abolitionists-crusade-and-the-painters-canvas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=50328","title":{"rendered":"Pink and the Fancy Gal: White Slavery, the Abolitionists\u2019 Crusade, and the Painter\u2019s Canvas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pink and the Fancy Gal: White Slavery, the Abolitionists\u2019 Crusade, and the Painter\u2019s Canvas<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide: a journal of nineteenth-century visual culture<\/a>
\nVolume 15, Issue 3, Autumn 2016<\/a><\/p>\n

Naurice Frank Woods Jr.<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor of African American Art History; Director of Undergraduate Studies in the African American and African Diaspora Studies Program
\nUniversity of North Carolina, Greensboro<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nFig. 1, George Fuller<\/a>, The Quadroon<\/em>, 1880. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gift of George A. Hearn, 1910.<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

This article examines two paintings from the antebellum period<\/a>, <\/em>The Slave Market (ca. 1859) by an unidentified artist and <\/em>The Freedom Ring (1860) by Eastman Johnson<\/a>, which involve the purchase of nearly white slaves, and attempts to delineate the motivation for presenting these images before the public. These paintings functioned much as slave narratives, and abolitionists<\/a> used them to provide visual evidence of an insidious, often sexually depraved side of \u201cthe peculiar institution.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

In late 1849, Massachusetts<\/a> native George Fuller<\/a> (1822\u201384) traveled throughout the Deep South<\/a> in pursuit of portrait commissions.[1] Like many of his northern contemporaries, Fuller sought a receptive and less competitive climate below the Mason-Dixon Line<\/a>. The artist\u2019s journey placed him directly in the midst of a region addicted to the institution of slavery, and while it may not have been his intention to observe astutely the lives of human chattel, Fuller was increasingly aware of their plight and recorded his observations in a sketch diary. Fuller\u2019s drawings and subsequent commentary revealed neither his political inclinations about the \u201cgreat divide\u201d that was gripping the nation nor his moral position on the subject. This was, however, his third trip to the region, and while his sketches remained dignified depictions of black plantation life, his words reflected growing concern over certain \u201crituals\u201d conducted in the South<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of these rituals, a slave auction involving a beautiful quadroon<\/a>, affected him profoundly. Fuller had witnessed slave auctions before, but the sight of men bidding over a nearly white slave like a farm animal caused him to write:<\/p>\n

Who is this girl with eyes large and black? The blood of the white and dark races is at enmity in her veins\u2014the former predominated. About \u00be white says one dealer. Three fourths blessed, a fraction accursed. She is under thy feet, white man. .\u00a0.\u00a0. Is she not your sister? .\u00a0.\u00a0. She impresses me with sadness! The pensive expression of her finely formed mouth and her drooping eyes seemed to ask for sympathy. .\u00a0.\u00a0. Now she looks up, now her eyes fall before the gaze of those who are but calculating her charms or serviceable qualities. .\u00a0.\u00a0. Oh, is beauty so cheap?…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article examines two paintings from the antebellum period, “The Slave Market” (ca. 1859) by an unidentified artist and “The Freedom Ring” (1860) by Eastman Johnson, which involve the purchase of nearly white slaves, and attempts to delineate the motivation for presenting these images before the public. These paintings functioned much as slave narratives, and abolitionists used them to provide visual evidence of an insidious, often sexually depraved side of \u201cthe peculiar institution.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,1196,6940,20],"tags":[25573,25574,34,6710,25572,6708,25575,37],"class_list":["post-50328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-literary-criticism","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-eastman-johnson","tag-george-fuller","tag-henry-ward-beecher","tag-naurice-frank-woods","tag-naurice-frank-woods-jr","tag-nineteenth-century-art-worldwide","tag-pink","tag-sally-maria-diggs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50328","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=50328"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51766,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50328\/revisions\/51766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}