Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Why Born Enslaved!
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Why Born Enslaved!, 1868, plaster with patina, 13 3/4 × 9 1/4 × 7 in.
An African woman turns her head defiantly upward in a sculpture defined by its dramatic shapes and silhouettes. Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux created this work twenty years after France abolished slavery in 1848, and only three years after emancipation in the United States in 1865. This bust was meant to appeal to the antislavery views of a progressive white audience. However, the sculpture also objectifies the Black female body with her bound bare breasts that symbolize both liberty and colonial fantasy. This plaster is one of a few sculptures he modelled after this now-unknown woman.
This woman was also the model for the allegorical figure of Africa on a large fountain representing the four continents that Carpeaux designed for a park in Paris. This plaster is one of the independent sculptures he made based on that figure.
(Brooklyn Museum)
This photograph was taken at the "Monet to Matisse: French Moderns, 1850-1950" exhibition at the Birmingham Museum of Art.
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Why Born Enslaved!
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Why Born Enslaved!, 1868, plaster with patina, 13 3/4 × 9 1/4 × 7 in.
An African woman turns her head defiantly upward in a sculpture defined by its dramatic shapes and silhouettes. Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux created this work twenty years after France abolished slavery in 1848, and only three years after emancipation in the United States in 1865. This bust was meant to appeal to the antislavery views of a progressive white audience. However, the sculpture also objectifies the Black female body with her bound bare breasts that symbolize both liberty and colonial fantasy. This plaster is one of a few sculptures he modelled after this now-unknown woman.
This woman was also the model for the allegorical figure of Africa on a large fountain representing the four continents that Carpeaux designed for a park in Paris. This plaster is one of the independent sculptures he made based on that figure.
(Brooklyn Museum)
This photograph was taken at the "Monet to Matisse: French Moderns, 1850-1950" exhibition at the Birmingham Museum of Art.