Images of History: White’s Man and Woman Eating
A man and a woman sit on the ground by the side of a mat. They eat stewed corn with their hands. This tableau was one of several watercolor paintings composed by the artist and explorer John White, who sailed with Richard Grenville and others to coastal North Carolina in 1585. Commissioned to portray the landscape, flora, fauna, and customs of the Algonquin-speaking peoples of the region, White depicted ceremonies, villages, food culture, and communal arrangements. Warriors, elders, chiefs, mothers, and children strike various poses to provide visual evidence of England’s earliest encounters with the native peoples of North America. Upon his return to England in 1587, White mounted and presented these paintings, along with several others depicting the West Indies, to an unknown patron at court. Unusual for their composition in watercolors rather than oil-based paints, White’s drawings became a sensation in Western Europe, catching the eye of the Flemish engraver Theodore de Bry. De Bry’s engravings of these drawings made their way into print through Thomas Hariot’s companion volume, A Brief and True Report of the Newfound Land of Virginia, printed in 1588. Hariot’s caption to White’s depiction of the man and woman eating corn described the couple as “sober in their eating and drinking.” They lived “long” lives and did not “oppress nature.” The flattering portrayal probably stemmed from the fact that White and Hariot were active participants in English overseas exploration and colonization. Both men took an active role in the famous ‘lost colony’ of Roanoke Island (1585-1590). White’s drawings were commissioned in part to promote the land and its people as salutary, bountiful, welcoming, and docile. The promotional character of this and other examples of early modern European encounter literature encouraged archetypical depictions of the Americas as paradisiacal lands inhabited by noble savages. A guest post by Dr. James Allegro, Norfolk State University.
Images of History: William Blake’s Europe Supported by Africa and America
William Blake’s engraving Europe Supported by Africa and America was created for the cover art for J. G. Stedman’s Narrative of a five years’ expedition, against the revolted Negros of Surinam, in Guiana, on the Wild Coast of South America; from the year 1772, to 1777 a travelogue and published in 1792. The image itself personifies the continents of Europe, Africa and the Americas in the bodies of three young women. The women are all nubile and seductive in their postures and gazes. The original manuscript submitted by Stedman had a distinctly anti-slavery bent, and Blake’s engravings reflect the ideas of human equality and fraternity Stedman espoused (the publisher forced Stedman and Blake to edit the work to remove the violent depictions of the depravities of slavery and tone down their political agenda). The planning committee of 1619: The Making of America chose this iconic image to represent our panel on the representations of Native Americans because it is so widely recognized as an iconic image of British colonialism. Blake’s images of the women as senusal and aloof, inviting and somehow apart highlights both the common bonds of womanhood and the dependance Europe quickly developed for its American and African colonies. The rope held by the white woman that entraps the two other women is also a powerful symbol of the institution of slavery that bound all three continents together. When the conference planners first started creating the advertisements for the conference, this image on our posters stirred up a lot of controversy on campus. What do you think about the image? Is it too provocative for an academic setting? Resources: Caroline Parkes, “Art as a Representation of Resistance” Slave Resistance: A Caribbean Study. http://scholar.library.miami.edu/slaves/representations/Individual_art_essays/carolines.htm
Museums, Art and Thinking About the Past
A visit to the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk struck a chord as I was thinking about race, gender and place and how we bring these themes to life in teaching and public history. The Chrysler Museum is getting ready to close for a year long renovation, and paintings have been removed, and moved to make way for repairs to the building. The result is some fascinating juxtaposition of space and content. Blank space frames rooms of untouched, well-curated art and artifacts. Paintings are paired with sculptures from different schools of thought and centuries. The subjects of gender and race are highlighted in new ways by the juxtaposition of pieces of art that are not usually displayed side by side or framed with empty space. One set of paintings in a half empty gallery set a Degas’ Dancer with Bouquet next to Mary Cassatt’s The Family, which is next to Gauguin’s The Loss of Virginity. The contrast of the innocence of Cassatt’s mother and children with the despair of the Gauguin and the exhaustion and depth of Degas’ ballerina give striking portraits of what it meant to be a woman at the turn of the century: maiden, mother, whore. This tryptic was set off and made more striking by the gaps in the flow of artwork around it. Imagine if we could rearrange art galleries like this on a regular basis? Curators put enormous effort into arranging exhibits to put paintings together in meaningful and provocative groupings, but economy of space means that empty space is rarely used to emphasize the content. As we think about how location can set off content, space and context become increasingly important in highlighting how art and exhibit design can draw our attention the space around an individual item or a grouping. As we begin to imagine a commemoration of 1619, the arrival of enslaved Africans, negative space, silence, and watchful presence, may speak louder than words. We bring some of this attention to loss in the planned libation ceremony, which will close the conference.