Portraits of Resistance: Activating Art During Slavery

Van Horn, Jennifer

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Description: Portraits of Resistance: Activating Art During Slavery

BOOKPortraits of Resistance: Activating Art During Slavery

Jennifer Van Horn

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00354

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23608

This timely and eloquent book tells a new history of American art: how enslaved people mobilized portraiture for acts of defiance. Revisiting the origins of portrait painting in the United States, Jennifer Van Horn reveals how mythologies of whiteness and of nation building erased the aesthetic production of enslaved Americans of African descent and obscured the portrait’s importance as a site of resistance.

Moving from the wharves of colonial Rhode Island to antebellum Louisiana plantations to South Carolina townhouses during the Civil War, the book illuminates how enslaved people’s relationships with portraits also shaped the trajectory of African American art post-emancipation. Van Horn asserts that Black creativity, subjecthood, viewership, and iconoclasm constituted instances of everyday rebellion against systemic oppression.

Portraits of Resistance is not only a significant intervention in the fields of American art and history but also an important contribution to the reexamination of racial constructs on which American culture was built.

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Author

Jennifer Van Horn

PublisherYale University Press

Print publication date November 2022 (in print)

Print ISBN 9780300257632

EISBN 9780300275155

Illustrations 139

Print Status in print

Publisher (in print)

WorldCat

Google Books

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List of illustrations

George Washington
Marché aux Nègres
Face Jug
Storage Jar
Shipping Sugar
A Map of the Most Inhabited Part of Virginia, detail
Plan, Profil et Distribution du Navire La Marie Séraphique de Nantes
View of the Deck of the Slave Ship Albanez
The Resurrection of Henry Box Brown
Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth with an unknown female attendant
Cecil Calvert (Second Lord Baltimore)
The Young Artist
Portrait of William Duguid
Nicholas Boylston
Portrait of William Duguid, inscription on back stretcher
Portrait of Henry Barnes
Portrait of Christian Barnes
Receipt
Coffee-pot
Portrait of Mary Pemberton
The Bermuda Group (Dean Berkeley and His Entourage)
Phillis Wheatley, Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatley, of Boston
Ralph Inman
Catharine Macaulay (née Sawbridge)
Self-Portrait of John Singleton Copley
The Academicians of the Royal Academy
The Portrait
Sarah Ogden Gustin
Gentleman with Attendant
Brooch
Mrs. James Smith (Elizabeth Murray)
Mrs. Thomas Gage
The Washington Family
The Washington Family
Dining Room, Mount Vernon (George Washington's Plantation)
The Washington Family
Portrait of Isaac Royall and Family
Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset KG (1662–1748) and an Unidentified Child Attendant
Charles Calvert and Once-Known Enslaved Attendant
Group Portrait, probably of the Raikes Family
George Washington and William Lee
Taste in High Life
The Washington Family, detail, infrared reflectogram of the figure of the enslaved attendant
The Washington Family
The Washington Family, detail
Alexander Spotswood Payne and His Brother, John Robert Dandridge Payne, with Their Nurse
Antislavery Medallion
George and Martha Washington at Leisure on the Grounds of Mount Vernon
Ignatius Sancho
Virginian Luxuries
The Washington Family, detail
George Washington to Clement Biddle, Philadelphia
George Washington Peace Medal
A Good Likeness of Sancho, a Negro
Mr. Shaw’s Blackman
The Federal Edifice
Watch fob
Portrait of a Ship's Steward
Negroes Belonging to George Washington in his own right and by Marriage
The Washington Family
Sketch of Charles Dupee
The Washington Family, detail
The Washington Family
Washington Family
Madewood Plantation (Thomas Pugh Plantation), near Napoleonville, Louisiana
Louisa Sidney Martin
Portrait of Thomas Bryan Pugh
Portrait of Delia
Portrait of Frederick
Col. and Mrs. James A. Whiteside, Son Charles, and Servants
Portrait of Isaac Lane, Wife Mary Pride Lane, Horse, Dog and Enslaved Body Servant
A Young Coachman
Manuel and Ben Tending to Tobacconist
Winter Quarters
Portrait of Mollie—Monticello, Florida
Daily Record of Cotton Picked
Riverlake Sugarhouse
Portrait of Delia, detail
Mary Louisa Lavinia Witherspoon Bisland
Longwood (Haller Nutt House), Natchez, Mississippi
Violet Anthony
Abby Ann King Turner Van Pelt
Haller Nutt
Portrait of Frederick, detail
Charles Wilson Fleetwood, Jr.
Portrait of a Woman of Color with Tignon
Bernard Duchamp Family Mourning Portrait
Wedding dress
Portrait of a Free Woman of Color Wearing a Tignon
Turned armchair
1884 New Orleans Exposition Souvenir Plate
Asher Moses Nathan and His Son
Four Children in a Louisiana Landscape
Daphne Williams, Age about 100
Vegetable Woman
Lady with a Harp: Eliza Ridgely
Entrance hall, Wilton House (William Randolph III house), Richmond, Va.
The Family Record (from Harper's Bazar, Vol. VIII)
Cinqué: The Chief of the Amistad Captives
The Bondwoman’s Narrative by Hannah Crafts, a Fugitive Slave Recently Escaped from North Carolina
Mrs. John Hill Wheeler and Her Two Sons
The Edward Lloyd Family
Wye House (Edward Lloyd house), Talbot County, Maryland
Hampton Plantation (Capt. Charles Ridgely house), Towson, Maryland
Benjamin and Mary Pusey
Sale of Estates, Pictures and Slaves in the Rotunda, New Orleans
Hampton Plantation, overseer’s house, Towson, Maryland
Types of Mankind
The Old Nurse’s Visit
Peter Manigault and His Friends
Head of Rameses
Frederick Douglass
Pier mirror and marble-topped table
The Red Room
Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Izard (Alice Delancey)
Arthur Middleton, His Wife Mary Izard, and Their Son Henry Middleton
Daniel Ward
Fire screen
Portrait of Charles Carter of Cleve
Gabriel Manigault
Mrs. Gabriel Manigault
Description of Paintings at No. 6 Gibbes Street, Charleston, So. Ca., the property of Charles Izard Manigault
Gabriel Manigault
Mrs. Gabriel Manigault
Henry Darnall III
Runaway notice for Dolly
[African American Woman holding a white Child]
Louis Manigault and Captain, His Servant
Runaway advertisement
Fire Screens
Charles Izard Manigault
Scene in the Parlor of Mr. Barnwell’s House at Beaufort, South Carolina
Possum am Sweet
Jaavon with Unknown Gentleman
Mending Socks
Emancipation
The Liar
Mr. and Mrs. Albert Thornton, Mobile, Alabama
Was It for the Best?

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Contents

Jennifer Van Horn

Portraits of Resistance: Activating Art During Slavery

Contents

Author

Jennifer Van Horn

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23609

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Acknowledgments

Jennifer Van Horn

Portraits of Resistance: Activating Art During Slavery

~Many people and institutions have lent generous support to this project. The book took shape during a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum (2015–16). At NPG my thanks to Robyn Asleson, Taína Caragol, Brandon Fortune, Kate Lemay, Dorothy Moss, Asma Naeem (now at BMA), Wendy Wick Reaves,...

Author

Jennifer Van Horn

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23610

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Introduction: Neptune Thurston’s Portraits

Jennifer Van Horn

Portraits of Resistance: Activating Art During Slavery

~“Neptune was my first master. The first idea I ever had of painting the human features I received from...

Author

Jennifer Van Horn

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.1-26

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00354.1

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23611

Chapter subject tags:Portrait painting, AmericanSlavery--United StatesAfrican American artistsArtists, BlackTransatlantic slave trade

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1. Making Portraits

Jennifer Van Horn

Portraits of Resistance: Activating Art During Slavery

~In February 1773 the Boston merchant William Duguid sat for his portrait (fig. 13). The depiction that resulted is in many ways a predictable...

Author

Jennifer Van Horn

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.27-71

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00354.2

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23612

Chapter subject tags:Portrait painting, American--18th centuryAfrican American artistsArtists, BlackSlave laborArt--Study and teachingRacism

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2. Fleeting Portraits

Jennifer Van Horn

Portraits of Resistance: Activating Art During Slavery

~He stands in the shadows on the right of Edward Savage’s monumental group portrait The Washington Family, one hand slipped into his waistcoat (fig. 33). Tucked between a column and an upholstered chair,...

Author

Jennifer Van Horn

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.72-121

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00354.3

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23613

Chapter subject tags:Portrait painting, AmericanSlavery--United StatesWashington, George, 1732-1799Sheels, Christopher, 1776-Antislavery movements

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3. Haunted Portraits

Jennifer Van Horn

Portraits of Resistance: Activating Art During Slavery

~This chapter begins and ends with the search for a portrait, a depiction of Homer Ryan, commissioned by the man who enslaved him, Thomas Pugh. Pugh displayed Ryan’s portrait in the parlor of...

Author

Jennifer Van Horn

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.122-171

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00354.4

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23614

Chapter subject tags:Portrait painting, American--19th centurySlavery--United StatesAfrican Americans in artBlack people in artSlaves--Emancipation

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4. Viewing Portraits

Jennifer Van Horn

Portraits of Resistance: Activating Art During Slavery

~In June 1937 members of the Works Project Administration’s Federal Writers’ Project interviewed and photographed Daphne Williams of Beaumont,...

Author

Jennifer Van Horn

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.172-217

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00354.5

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23615

Chapter subject tags:Portraits, AmericanCrafts, Hannah. Bondwoman's narrativePlantationsArt--Collectors and collectingRacism

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5. Destroying Portraits

Jennifer Van Horn

Portraits of Resistance: Activating Art During Slavery

~Picture the scene in Charleston, South Carolina, sometime between the summer of 1863 and the winter of 1865. South Carolina had seceded from the United States two...

Author

Jennifer Van Horn

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.218-261

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00354.6

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23616

Chapter subject tags:Portrait painting, AmericanIconoclasmGenealogySlaves--Emancipation

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Epilogue: Archibald Motley’s Portraits

Jennifer Van Horn

Portraits of Resistance: Activating Art During Slavery

~An elderly Black woman darns socks in a Chicago home (fig. 135). Her left hand engulfed in a sock, she probes the fabric with the fingers of her right, feeling for the hole or perhaps drawing a needle from the sock’s interior. A pile...

Author

Jennifer Van Horn

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.262-276

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00354.7

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23617

Chapter subject tags:Portrait painting, American--20th centuryMotley, Archibald John, Jr., 1891-1981African American women in artWomen, Black, in artStereotypes (Social psychology) in artPortrait photography--United States--20th century

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