Virginian Luxuries

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Paintings have the capability to capture moments over time, while providing a glimpse into what is taking place in that specific time period. Images are subject to change in regards to when and what is happening at that present time, how people view each other, and how the audience interprets these images. The U.S. in the early eighteen hundreds experienced a great change in ways that society viewed race, sex, gender, slavery, and freedom. Several of the images that have resurfaced during this time are in response to these changes. This paper will utilize the image “Virginian Luxuries” from 1810 and the “Amalgamation Waltz” from 1840 to illustrate how images change over time, while indentifying the specific historical contexts in which they …show more content…
Clay’s Practical Amalgamation series in 1840 was the “Amalgamation Waltz”. Immediately the viewers are presented with a dancing hall that depicts white middle class women dancing the waltz with black men, whom are drawn with exaggerated caricature like features. Upon further analysis of the image, themes of race, sex, gender, slavery, and freedom are all represented. This image is Clay’s predication of what the end results of the abolitionist movement would look like. The closeness found between the white women and black men is a warning made by Clay that white women and black men would soon openly court, marry, and even produce interracial children. This image surfacing in 1840 U.S. was part of a vital shift in cultural conceptions of gender and race. Images had been replacing the black enslaved man figure with an image of the free black man whom possessed freedom. Accompanying this was the rise of the white female figure, which went from the helpless victim to an assertive heronine. Represented in the back of the image is a group of white men who were subjected to band members. This suggests the removal of white men from having total superiority over black men and pushes them into the background within society. Changes in the ways white women and black men were perceived occurred due to the shift in both audience and historical context. Images at this time displayed a domestic view of life that presented the home and family at its center. Due to …show more content…
As the eighteen hundreds progressed, images are moving away from that of “Virginian Luxuries” representation of slavery into a more centralized concept of life after slavery and the implications of the abolition movement. Over time changes in the ways that black individuals are being drawn in visual works is also drastically changing. In “Virginian Luxuries” both black slaves are drawn in actual representation of how one were to image an individual of that time were to be drawn. Their features mimicked those of their white master and their body parts were drawn proportionally. In contrast, the 1840 “Amalgamation Waltz” image paints a wildly different picture. The black men represented in this image resemble something similar to the “zipcoon” image that is found in the Ethnic Notions video. These images surfaced right around the time that the abolitionist movement took off. “As people worked to eradicate slavery there were also people increasing the exaggerated portrayal of a black man” (Ethnic Notions). This exaggerated caricature like image of the black man is presented in the “Amalgamation Waltz” image. Clay’s image also deals with the concern of the white middle class women’s movement out of the domestic setting into the public sphere and political arena, which is not expressed in
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