Blog Post 1

Blog Post 1 
By: Bitzi Evans 

For my blog project, I chose to start my research with the painting Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth by Pierre Mignard. This portrait is an oil painting done on canvas in 1682 . It is currently hanging in the National Portrait Gallery in London.  The Duchess was the mistress of Charles II and was painted when the Duchess visited Paris in 1682. 

            I chose this painting because after viewing it in class, I thought it was very beautifully done. I thought it was interesting how the black servant was dressed. She is dressed in very beautiful, high fashion clothes and wearing a string of large pearls around her neck. This is very different than any other depiction I had seen of servants in this time period, and I thought it would be interest to look at in a more in-depth setting.

            This piece relates to borders with the African world in a very direct way because there is an African servant in the painting with the Duchess I thought this was very peculiar until I did some further research on the subject. Then I found out that many of the upper class women were given black children from Africa as presents from other very wealthy individuals. In the case of the Duchess of Portsmouth, she was speculated to have been given the child as a present to persuade Charles II and to be in his favor.

            This was shocking to me. They treated this little girl like a pet. I understand that slavery was going on and that would be way worse for this little girl to be a slave girl in the colonies. However, in this painting she is basically being used as a status symbol. Since the Duchess in the painting is a mistress of Charles II, she basically is saying that Charles II is so successful even his mistress’s servant is dressed in pearls and fine clothes. The same feat could have been accomplished by just having the mistress wear a fancy necklace and paint her so pale because she would never have to go outside to work. But instead, the artist chose to use a little black servant as a status symbol, which I found very interesting.

            This was one way the idea of borders was used in this painting. For one, this girl would have been traded for by the person who gave her to the Duchess or picked up as a present when a wealthy merchant was visiting Africa. So she had to cross literal borders to make it to England where she would become a servant to the Duchess.

            She would also have to cross class borders to be a servant to the Duchess. She would be coming from Africa as a poor child in the lowest class where she and her family would be taken advantage of by slave traders and have no choices. Than she would be taken to the highest echelons of society and forced to act like high-class society members.

            I would like to learn more about how common it was to give servants as presents. I would also like to learn what life was like for these children and how they came to be in this situation. I would also like to learn more about different portraits with black servants and see if they were as well treated, as this little girl seems to be. Or if it as a façade and they were only brought out to show off.

Work Cited

"The National Portrait Gallery/Current Exhibitions." The National Portrait Gallery/Current Exhibitions. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2015.