JASNA-NY Regional Meeting – “Attendant with pearls”: Race, Portraiture, and Abolition with Prof. Patricia Matthew
ONLINE via ZOOM , United StatesThis talk compares how Black figures in portraits and paintings are attired and positioned in pre-abolition paintings to how artists rendered them in response to the atrocities highlighted by the anti-sugar campaigns. It discusses paintings like Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth’s portrait with a Black child, the now famous portrait of Lord Mansfield’s nieces Dido and Elizabeth, and W. Pyott’s "The Benevolent Effects of Abolishing Slavery or the Planter Instructing his Negro". It will also show how Black contemporary artists like Peter Brathwaite’s and Titus Kaphar’s interpretations of pre-1900 paintings should be understood and celebrated as emancipatory acts.
