Currently not on view
Portrait of a Negro Girl,
ca. 1807
possibly Charles Zechel
y1969-9
More Context
Special Exhibition
This pair of compelling portraits is based on seventeenthcentury Dutch prints of a young woman and young man of African origin. Recreated here in the traditional folk-art technique of reverse glass painting, this young pair turn their bodies toward each other as their faces gaze outward, a traditional arrangement for paintings of newly engaged or married couples. The identities of these figures are unknown, but their dress is characteristic of seventeenth-century America.
Information
Title
Portrait of a Negro Girl
Dates
ca. 1807
Maker
possibly Charles Zechel
Medium
Oil on glass
Dimensions
9.1 x 7.6 cm (3 9/16 x 3 in.)
frame: 31.3 x 41.5 x 3.2 cm (12 5/16 x 16 5/16 x 1 1/4 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Mrs. Gerald Wilkinson
Object Number
y1969-9
Signatures
[Signature found on companion, y69-10]
Culture
Type
Subject
- "Acquisitions 1969", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 29, no. 1 (1970): p. 16-27., p. 23
- Guy C. McElroy, et al., Facing History: the Black Image in American Art, 1710-1940, (San Francisco, CA: Bedford Arts Publishers, 1990). , p. 12-13
- Kathleen Thompson & Hilary Mac Austin, eds., The face of our past: images of Black women from colonial America to the present, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999)., p. 130 (illus.)
- Kim F. Hall, "Object into object?: some thoughts on the presence of black women in early modern culture", in Peter Erickson and Clark Hulse, eds., Early modern visual culture : representation, race, and empire in Renaissance England, (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000)., p. 369, fig. 128;
- Tonya Bolden, Tell all the children our story: memories and mementos of being young and Black in America, (New York: Abrams, 2001)., p. 14 (illus.)
