William Henry Hunt, Massa Sambo, aka, Jim Crow, Exhibited 1836

Massa Sambo

Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight (Liverpool), England

Waterccolor, bodycolor, gum arabic, white chalk (original?), with scratching out

13 1/4 X 9 1/4, 33.6 X 23.5 cm.

Signed and dated, l.l., W. HUNT [date partially illegible since covered by glued-down matt] 1836?

 

Provenance:

B. Johnson by 1844;

Ralph Bernal (S) Christie's London, 21 April 1853, Lot 27 [as Black Boy with Bellows] (P) 17 gns.;

B. Johnson (?), according to Tom Jones;

Mrs. Gibbons (S) Christie's London, 17 Mar 1883, Lot 97 [as Master Jim Crow] (P) £178 10s. McLean (London dealer);

James Orrock (S) Chrisitie's London, 4 June 1904, Lot 24 [as Jim Crow (P) £189 Boswell but actually Bought in and subsequently sold by Orrock, in Nov. 1904, to Lord Leverhulm, by whom it was donated to the Lady Lever Art Gallery.

 

Exhibited:

1836, London, Society of Painters in Water-colours, No. 98 (as Massa Sambo);

1887, Manchester, England, Royal Jubilee Exhibition, No. 1724.

1981 Hunt Exhibition, No. 117.

 

This watercolor has, until now, uniformly been identified by all commentators as the work exhibited by Hunt at the 1837 Spring Exhibition of the Society of Painters in Water-colours under the title, Jim Crow. But since existing records from the Society clearly show that the 1837 work was purchased from the exhibit by Lady Rolle, with whose descendants it remained until it was next sold in 1981, this watercolor is instead almost certainly Hunt's earlier entry, from the 1836 exhibition, entitled Massa Sambo. The confusion, in part, comes from the fact that this watercolor was later engraved by Thomas Fairland in 1840 with the title Master James Crow and again, for Hunt's Comic Sketches (1844) with the title of Master James Crow -- Out of His Element. The watercolor has subsequently been exhibited under the name, Jim Crow.

 

According to an entry on the Victoria & Albert Museum website for a copy of the 1840 lithograph, the comic blackface act from which the term "Jim Crow" emerged was first seen in London in 1836, although no month is given. It is very likely that the artist was himself involved in choosing the titles of lithographic reproductions of his work, since Hunt was always concerned about titles and took joy in coming up with puns or other clever descriptions for his watercolors. In this case, it is certainly possible that Massa Sambo's original title was changed after it was first exhibited, due to the fame achieved by the blackface act after the 1836 watercolour society exhibition.

 

Although the image shown in this watercolor shows no signs of caricature, the title(s) chosen by the artist reflects the 19th Century attitudes and stereotyping of Blacks. It is hard to understand why Hunt would have resorted to such titles for his Black subjects, since he was known to have friends among the Black and Gypsy populations of Hastings, England. The original titles of the watercolor and the 1840 lithograph have little to do with the visual images, other than the race of the model. But the boy's activity of warming himself by a fire, is clearly the source of the "comic" title used in Hunt's Comic Sketches, even if the humor is unusually derogatory in nature compared to most other titles chosen by Hunt for his Black subjects.

Done