John Northwood (British, 1837–1902), Josiah Wedgwood and Sons (English, established 1759), Copy of the Portland Vase. Black and white jasper ware. Princeton University Art Museum. Gift of George Packer Berry, Class of 1921 Colomba addresses issues of both race and gender in her reinterpretations of allegorical symbolism and classical mythology. In Four Elements, Five Senses, Colomba surrounds her elegant protagonist with nine allegorical concepts, ranging from the bowl of fruits signifying earth to the bird nestled in the woman’s hand, which symbolizes both the element air and the sense of touch. Colomba also seeks to show the woman in a moment of leisure, or what she calls “timeless lightness,” which renders her attuned to her senses and absorbed in her luxurious surroundings.
Colomba’s elaborate settings can be emotionally charged for some of her Black female subjects. In the Museum’s watercolor Clytie, the mythological nymph’s cowering stance denotes trauma after Helios, god of the sun, betrayed and abandoned her. Subsequently, she wasted away while gazing at his chariot as it traversed the sky; Helios (often interchanged with Apollo) then transformed her into a flower that always turns toward the sun. In Colomba’s interpretation, Clytie turns away from both the god himself—represented as Apollo in the painting above the mantel behind her—and a group of sunflowers arranged in the much-copied ancient Roman Portland Vase (British Museum), with its enigmatic vignettes of white figures on a black ground. Colomba’s Clytie recoils from the rejection and exclusion imposed on her by entrenched Western story lines. Like the other depictions of Black women in the exhibition, this watercolor exemplifies Colomba’s goal of repainting centuries of pictorial bias and her commitment to what she describes as “anchoring the spirit of the African diaspora by . . . establishing a different visual landscape, devoid of servile narrative.”
Laura M. Giles Heather and Paul G. Haaga Jr., Class of 1970, Curator of Prints and Drawings
Art@Bainbridge is made possible through the generous support of the Kathleen C. Sherrerd Program Fund for American Art; the Virginia and Bagley Wright, Class of 1946, Program Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art; Barbara and Gerald Essig; and Joshua R. Slocum, Class of 1998, and Sara Slocum. Additional support is provided by Stacey Roth Goergen, Class of 1990, and Robert B. Goergen.