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Creator:
John Raphael Smith, 1752–1812
Title:

Woman Holding a Mask [2014, Figures of Empire, exhibition catalogue]

Former Title(s):

A Lady Holding a Negro Mask

Date:
between 1795 and 1800
Medium:
Pastel on medium, moderately textured, wove paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 13 1/4 × 10 1/2 inches (33.7 × 26.7 cm), Frame: 16 7/8 × 14 1/8 × 1 1/4 inches (42.9 × 35.9 × 3.2 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1977.14.6285
Classification:
Drawings & Watercolors
Collection:
Prints and Drawings
Subject Terms:
genre subject | mask | pearls | portrait | theatre | woman
Access:
Accessible by appointment in the Study Room [Request]
Note: The Study Room is open by appointment. Please visit the Study Room page on our website for more details.
Link:
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:7940
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This young woman is dressed for a masquerade. Over her white dress is a black “domino,” or voluminous hooded cape. She holds a mask that bears the stereotyped features of a black man or woman with conspicuously pink lips and cheeks. When the mask was pressed to her face, and the hood was up, the woman’s identity would be completely disguised. As fashionable fancy-dress entertainments, masquerades reached the height of their popularity in Britain in the 1770s and 1780s. Guests wore costumes that transgressed boundaries of gender, culture, class, and—as in this instance—race. Sometimes white men and women attended as “blackamoors” or Africans. In 1770, one man was seen “in the character of Mungo.”

John Raphael Smith—who also published the paired antislavery prints displayed in the previous room—established a reputation for his female genre subjects, including depictions of actresses and prostitutes, which he exhibited at the Royal Academy and published as prints. By the 1790s he was also advertising “portraits in crayons” (i.e., pastels). Whether this pastel was intended as a portrait or a more generic image, it staged feminine whiteness through the juxtaposition of its perceived opposite. It did so at a moment when new biological theories of human difference were laying foundations for the scientific racism that would underpin colonialism and social inequality in the nineteenth century and beyond.

Gallery label for Figures of Empire: Slavery and Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain (Yale Center for British Art, 2014-10-02 - 2014-12-14)
This young woman is dressed for a masquerade. Over her white dress is a black “domino,” or voluminous hooded cape. She holds a mask that bears the stereotyped features of a black man or woman with conspicuously pink lips and cheeks. When the mask was pressed to her face, and the hood was up, the woman’s identity would be completely disguised. As fashionable fancy-dress entertainments, masquerades reached the height of their popularity in Britain in the 1770s and 1780s. Guests wore costumes that transgressed boundaries of gender, culture, class, and—as in this instance—race. Sometimes white men and women attended as “blackamoors” or Africans. In 1770, one man was seen “in the character of Mungo.”

John Raphael Smith—who also published the paired antislavery prints displayed in the previous room—established a reputation for his female genre subjects, including depictions of actresses and prostitutes, which he exhibited at the Royal Academy and published as prints. By the 1790s he was also advertising “portraits in crayons” (i.e., pastels). Whether this pastel was intended as a portrait or a more generic image, it staged feminine whiteness through the juxtaposition of its perceived opposite. It did so at a moment when new biological theories of human difference were laying foundations for the scientific racism that would underpin colonialism and social inequality in the nineteenth century and beyond.

Esther Chadwick, Meredith Gamer, and Cyra Levenson

Figures of Empire: Slavery and Portraiture in eighteenth-century Atlantic Britain, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2014, p. 33, V 2556 (YCBA)

Figures of Empire: Slavery and Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain (Yale Center for British Art, 2014-10-02 - 2014-12-14) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

English Portrait Drawings & Miniatures (Yale Center for British Art, 1979-12-05 - 1980-02-17) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

David Bindman, The Image of the Black in Western Art : From the " Age of Discovery" to the Age of Abolition, , vol. 3, part 3, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2010, pp. 171-72, 173, fig. 165, N8217.B535 I42 2010+ (YCBA) Citations are to Vol. 3, Part 3 [YCBA]

Figures of Empire : Slavery and Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2014, pp. 33, 44, V 2556 (YCBA) Also available online: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://britishart.yale.edu/sites/default/files/inline/Figures%20of%20Empire_booklet_FINAL.pdf [YCBA]

Slavery and Portraiture in 18th-century Atlantic Britain, [Website] , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2015, Available online https://interactive.britishart.yale.edu/slavery-and-portraiture/ [Website]


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