Artist Mickalene Thomas has put together an intriguing exhibit a the Yale University Art Gallery of portraits of African Americans in the pre-Emancipation period of enslavement before the stoutly resisted freedom of Blacks in America. I visited the gallery to see the exhibit last weekend. It is on display until January 7, 2024 at the free museum. Make sure to take the newspaper guide to the objects on display which is available free at the entrance to the exhibit.
The exhibit opens with a tiny portrait of a long-enslaved woman named Rose Prentice. Born in 1771, Prentice was enslaved in New Hampshire and Massachusetts before being freed. The watercolor painting on ivory by the American miniaturist Sarah Goodridge was created in 1838. Goodridge was a Boston artist whose subjects included Daniel Webster and Gilbert Stuart. Today, one of her paintings, Beauty Revealed, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Rose Prentice had helped to raise the woman she worked for, in freedom, at the time this portrait was painted. Prentice is in a substantial dress, with a ruffle for a collar. She has a pearl earring and a hat that may be a tribute to her African ancestry.
According to the New York Times; “These are definitely garments Rose took great pride in and put on specifically for this,” [Mickalene] Thomas said. Imagining that Prentice would have seen many portraits of others throughout her employer’s home, Thomas added, “I feel there’s full awareness that she’s posing and appreciation for having her portrait done that might have made her feel incredibly seen.”
The exhibit has other paintings like this one from the 19th Century.
Below is an unknown Black artist painting a miniature. It is likely that the painting below was a self-portrait.
There are several miniatures on display.
The majority of works exhibited are of Black men and women posing for ambrotypes and daguerreotypes. According to Mickalene Thomas, the majority of these photos were of free people. Slaves were only photographed by themselves for portraits. Many were arranged by the person photographed or by their families and the portraits were either kept at home or given as gifts to their children or close friends.
There are also silhouettes. These might be used by white families as decoration for their homes.
Below is drawing of Phillis Wheatley that appears on the frontispiece of her book of poetry, one of the first publications by an African American author. There are several books exhibited here that are 150 to 225 years old.
The ambrotype below is of a seated young lady holding a banjo that was taken sometime during the Civil War.
There are a number of published volumes which include the authors’ image. Here is an 1844 lithograph used in a journal by the first African American woman, Jarena Lee, to become a preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Below is the frontispiece of the Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave. He was enslaved in Kentucky, Louisiana, and Arkansas. After several attempts, Bibb finally escaped slavery and went to live in Detroit. The gallery guide says that the illustration was based on a notice published by those trying to recapture him. This image was published in the book in 1849.
This illustration from a book printed in 1804 shows an enslaved woman named Alice who worked at Dunk’s Ferry on the Delaware River near Philadelphia. She was enslaved until she was an octageneron, being freed for the last decades of her life.
Below is a couple painted in watercolors in Philadelphia around 1838. Their clothes and the woman’s gold jewelry show them to be part of the city’s growing middle class. Many Blacks from this class background were active in Abolitionist activities in the Quaker City and some assisted the emerging Underground Railroad.
The “gallery” is actually a museum taking up a quarter-block of New Haven’s downtown. There are many permanent exhibits there, so, while the exhibit I am reporting on takes about a half-an-hour to see, you might want to set aside two hours to see the whole museum.
The gallery, which is free, opens at 11 AM on Saturday and Sunday. The exhibit is on the fourth floor. The gallery is at 1111 Chapel St. in New Haven. You can find out when else it is open here.
Note: All contemporary photos of the exhibit were taken by Patrick Young.
Follow Reconstruction Blog on Social Media:
1 thought on “New Exhibit on African American Portraits Before Emancipation at Yale University Art Gallery”