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The painting is undeniably a valuable tool for establishing a chronicle of a nations
history. Yet, only with a reservation that it is not de-contextualized or sharply separated from
the circumstances it was created, is it the proper and significant particle in the construction of
the national heritage. American painting in the nineteenth century evolved from strictly
historical themes towards depicting the proceedings and habits of the ordinary people which
was the occupation willingly pursued by genre painters. As the, themes and techniques
changed, the political and social attitudes towards the Southern Negro remains stable.
Although the Emancipation Proclamation brought about the abolition of slavery in the region,
Black Americans were hindered on their way to genuine citizenship by purposeful
disenfranchisement and social degradation maintained through the myth of their inferiority
largely spread throughout the country.
In this essay, the genre painting will be analyzed, since the artists who decided to
depict Negro Americans on their canvasses both were the practitioners engaged into the trend.
The period in question spread between 1807 and 1906 embracing the live spans of William
Sidney Mount and Eastman Johnson whose works will be the focus here. Their works were
produced to satisfy the orders of the rich American and European customers, thus shaping the
image of the USA abroad. Overall positive impression beaming from their pictures was the
necessary measure taken to show American plantations as the warm hospitable home for all.
The hospitality fell within certain limits for the Southern Negroes who were demanded to
know their place as servants or field workers and accept it, which they learned as their
survival lesson.1Such a portrayal considerably influenced the latter perception of the Negroes
as separate but equal. Both Mount and Eastman, however, have rather equipped the
enslaved Negro in dignity, in the sense that they considered valuable merely to involve the
1Alex Bontemps, "Representing Slavery: A Roundtable Discussion: Seeing Slavery," Common-Place,no. 4 (2001), http://www.common-place.org/vol-01/no-04/slavery/bontemps.shtml (accessed November 30
2009).
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Blacks as one of the themes of their works. What had happened latter in the century, with the
advent of blackface minstrelsy, only reinforced the fact that Mount and Johnson focused on
what was commonly desirable, not on the accuracy or fidelity of the Negro image.
William Sydney Mount born in 1807 in Setauket, New York, was confronted with his
fathers early death and taken to live with his grandparents. His sojourn at Stony Brook
instilled the admiration for nature in the young boy, which later will fruit in him being in the
circle of The Hudson River School painters. His artistic inclinations were discovered and
fostered by his brother Henry who agreed to apprentice William in his sign shop. Mount
exposed some talent in also in the domain of music. During his childhood years, with the
inspiration of his uncle Micah Hawkins, he acquainted himself with the piano and violin
melodies composed by Mr. Hawkins for the local audiences. The painter himself was often
invited to play the popular jigs, waltzes, and reels of the time at parties and dances. 2 The
sound of music will later accompany his portrayals of Negro instrument players contributing
to the creation of the stereotypically perceived blacks as having the natural even irrational
musical talent. In his diaries he reminisces the Mounts family slave Anthony Hannibal Clapp
whom he used to listen to playing fiddle, so the presence of the black people with their
customs and habits was nothing strange to William. As he describes, although Anthony was
of a disgraced race, he still was always happy and made anybody else so 3. Yet another
instance of Mountss familiarity with Black slaves or indentured servant was at his
grandfathers estate where he had met Cane who, as the painter observed, though was called a
slave distinguished from others with a very independent and free mind.4 Thus, William Mount
was early accustomed to black men and black music, and to the commonly held belief that
2 Traditional Fine Arts Organization, The Riches of Sight William Sidney Mount and his World
Fine Lines of William Sydney Mount, http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/3aa/3aa338.htm.
3 Karen M. Adams, The Black Image in the Paintings of William Sydney Mount,American Art
Journal7 (1975): 44.
4 Ibid.
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black people were fine and happy human beings in their place, divinely designated as below
that of white men. The Negro motifs must have appealed to him, making his genre paintings
extremely popular among the contemporaries.
The motif of black musician was particularly employed by William Sydney Mount
from his earliest artistic trials as it can be seen in Rustic Dance after a Sleigh Ride (Figure 1)
inspired by the 1820 work of John Lewis KrimmelDance in the Country Tavern. Young artist
used the structure of the picture and positioning of the people the same way the German-
American painter did a decade before. Despite being in the background the Negro fiddler, also
a borrowing from Krimmel, may be interpreted as controlling the situation depicted in the
painting by his act of playing. The fiddler is presented as a strict professional not as the one to
attend the dancing for pleasure, as are the other two Negro figures one with a whip, peeping
through the door and the other with bellows positioned at the fire place. All the three were
purposefully depicted as faithful and content servants treating the assigned tasks with
indulgence. It seems Mount's decision to paint a scene of local color was fortunate, for when
Rustic Dance was exhibited at the American Institute of the City of New York in 1830 it won
first prize and achieved popular success.5
Mountss occupation with Negro theme allowed the European minds of the time to
feel the flavor of American-ness as he continued with his careful portrayal of the Negro life
his Banjo Playerand Bones Playerpictures, both created in 1856. By the time he was
established with the reputation of comic scenes6 painter which to the contemporary critics
was synonymous to everyday life chronicler. These studies were painted verily and
realistically focusing on the minutest detail. The joy and beauty of the paintings must have
enchanted the European patrons for whom they were produced. Nevertheless, through the
5 Ibid., 43.
6 Ibid., 49.
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vivid colors the author communicates a message of the happy, playful and childlike Negro
who were able to express instinctive emotions rather than decide on sober actions. The banjo
and bones players visible in the pictures conformed to the Happy Plantation slave Myth with
the Negro gamboling like a comfortably feeling animal-like creature, but did not caricature
the Negroes as strongly, as the minstrel stereotypes. Mount, as a matter of fact, had patrons
among slaveholders who extracted the beauty and happiness but at the same time did not feel
offended by the overestimate Negro position in those works.
Mount accustomed to the Black people by his childhood experiences, nonetheless
became an active member of Democratic Party prior to the Civil War when he negated the
abolitionist movement.7 Considering this aspect in his biography it is needless to accuse him
of double-face thinking. He was an artist giving the audience what it wanted to see and what
was to be easily digested by the public. The reasoning helps to justify his reluctance towards
depicting blacks in their own environment, without the careful and, as it was commonly
believed, loving supervision of white masters. Demonization was substituted with
idealization, all that to show the individuality of Negroes, as possessing the kind of instinctive
sensibility for music as he himself was credited with. Since the idealization was only to cover
up the political and ideological negative stereotyping, Mounts works should probably be
analyzed predominantly on the artistic value, not as the credible portrayal of the African
Americans of the nineteenth century USA.
Eastman Johnson was another genre painter devotedly portraying the reality
surrounding Black Americans. Born 1824 in Lovell, Maine, he studied painting by visiting the
greatest galleries starting in Dsseldorf he continued through Italy, Holland, and France. 8As
7 Alfred Frankenstein, William Sydney Mount and the Act of PaintingAmerican Art Journal1(1969): 40.
8 Henry Theodore Tuckerman, Book of the artists: American artist life. (G.P. Putnam & sons, 1867),467.
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well as Mount he regarded Blacks as civilized but unable to support themselves. The Civil
War is believed to have shaped his depiction of Afro Americans along the lines of national
stereotype which framed Southern Blacks as romantically inferior but as well as the paintings
of William Sydney Mount, such idealized images appeared to both pro- and anti- slavery
Americans.9 Both the rustic idealized aspect together with that more dramatic one connected
to the Civil War circumstances are presented in two works of Johnson: Old Kentucky Home
(or Life in the South) painted in 1859, andRide for Liberty of 1862.
The Old Kentucky Home is arguably the best-known painted image of American
slaves, and it is widely acknowledged as the most significant work of Eastman Johnson, one
that effectively launched his career when it was first exhibited at the National Academy of
Design in 1859.10 The title of the painting is divergent with the true location which is his
father's block on F Street in New York. Slaves are depicted while doing their work, like the
woman who is preparing vegetables while being courted by a man. The dilapidated
surroundings have room for a female child caregiver who is leaning out of the window. The
viewer may also notice a dancing boy and a banjo player who are intensely engaged in the
leisurely activities, a woman with a plate of some dish, and an older one looking at the white
man who is entering into the area crossing the rude wooden threshold11.
The success of this picture is probably to be owed to its flexibility in the interpretation.
To abolitionists it beamed with the terrible life conditions of slaves and to those on the other
side of the political debate it confirmed the natural inclination of Blacks towards leading lazy
lives, thus unable to support themselves if freed from white supervision. Moreover, enemies
9 Albert Boime,Art. in the age of civil struggle, 1848-1871. (University of Chicago Press, 2008), 432.
10 John Davis, Eastman Johnsons Negro Life at the South and Urban Slavery in Washington, D.C.,
the Art Bulletin 80: 1 (1998): 69.
11 Ibid., 70.
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of abolition probably would have added all the generations were represented in Johnsons
scene, thus the claim that the slavery institution devastated the Southern Black families is
discredited. On the part of slaves however, the family preservation factor was the main reason
for escaping their white benefactors as; the masters were propagated to have been at the time
of Eastman Johnsons life.12 Indeed, such a strong tendency was it for a Southern Negro to
escape due to family re-unification that it became one of Eastman Johnsons painting subject
in The Ride for Freedom.
The Ride to Freedom is more tonal than the other Johnsons paintings, nevertheless it
captures almost photographic immediacy of the escape. The African-American family,
knowing the situation is risky, faces the projected freedom looking both forwards and
backwards. The scene is far from idyllic but it may be perceived as a typical depiction of
African-American men as those who are fugitive slaves. Unable to be regarded as lawful
citizens, they are unwilling to conform to their fixed place in supposedly warm and cozy
home in the proximity of a white master. Once again the mythologized Negro is dominant in
the paintings which are referred to as realistic in the history of fine art 13.
Nineteenth century painting as, it can be concluded, may not serve as a reliable source
for transmitting a collective remembrance of the Southern slave for it omits the aspect of the
memory of slavery as an exceedingly cruel institution as it is implied in Daviss article 14. Te
paintings of Mount and Eastman fail to reflect the true position of the Negro in American
society, as if covering up the burning question of legalized campaign violence15 which was the
genuine face of slavery. Davis also mentions the point in historic scholarship when textbooks
12 Lois E. Horton, Slavery and the making of America. (Oxford University Press US, 2005), 129.
13 Boime, 440
14
Davis, 88.
15 Ibid.
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failed to account for an institution of slavery, focusing on the romanticized aspect of
plantation life16. Such an approach may be attributed to the paintings mentioned above
justifying partially the great popularity of the works even nowadays.
Works Cited
16 Ibid.
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B103 Painting as a Vehicle of Collective Memory Representations of the American Negro in the works of
Eastman Johnson and William Sydney Mount.
Adams, Karen, M. "The Black Image in the paintings of William Sydney Mount."American
Art Journal7 (1975).
Boime, Alberto. Art in the age of civil struggle, 1848-1871. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2008.
Bontemps, Alex."Representing Slavery: A Roundtable Discussion: Seeing Slavery" Common-
Place no. 1 (July, 2001), http://www.common-place.org/vol-01/no-
04/slavery/bontemps.shtml (accessed November 30 2009).
Davis, John. Eastman Johnsons Negro Life at the South and Urban Slavery in Washington,
D.C. The Art Bulletin 80; 1 (1998).
Frankenstein, Alfred. William Sydney Mount and the Act of Painting. American Art
Journal1 (1969).
Horton , Lois E. Slavery and the Making of America. Oxford:Oxford University Press US,
2005.
Traditional Fine Arts Organization. The Riches of Sight William Sidney Mount and his
World Lines of William Sydney Mount. http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/3aa/3aa338.htm
(accessed December 1, 2009).
Tuckerman. Henry, Theodore Book of the Artists: American artist life. Michigan: G. P.
Putnam & sons, 1867.
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