WEBVTT - The Black Muse 0:00:01.400 --> 0:00:04.200 On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and fair Weather 0:00:04.280 --> 0:00:26.440 Friends Media. You are right now, Katie is looking at 0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:29.320 a painting. Katie, can you tell me what you see? 0:00:29.640 --> 0:00:34.320 So there's a naked white woman on a bed, she 0:00:34.520 --> 0:00:38.560 has her shoes on in the bed trifling, and there's 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:42.320 a black woman behind her who's fully closed and holding 0:00:42.479 --> 0:00:46.960 a bouquet of flowers. The white woman's gaze is directly 0:00:47.000 --> 0:00:50.120 at you, the person watching the painting, but the black 0:00:50.159 --> 0:00:51.600 woman is looking at the white lady. 0:00:52.080 --> 0:00:53.560 So have you seen this painting before? 0:00:53.960 --> 0:00:57.120 Okay, you've never seen this from. 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:00.760 Well, so you know it's Olympia and it's by the 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:05.399 French painter Edouard Money. And it's been a while, but 0:01:05.520 --> 0:01:08.600 I have seen this painting in person. So I love 0:01:08.640 --> 0:01:13.240 seeing paintings from all different periods and styles, including oil 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:16.560 paintings in the realist style like Olympia is. But when 0:01:16.560 --> 0:01:19.880 there's a black person in an oil Europeans painting, then 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:22.360 I linger a little bit longer. When I'm in museums, 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:26.040 I wonder who they were. I wonder what the artist's 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:29.080 relationship with them was. I wonder if they were real 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:32.720 or imagined, or if the character is a composite person. 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:35.920 I wonder how black people lived in whatever setting they 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:36.360 were in. 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:39.480 Yeah, it makes sense to linger on those paintings a 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:42.600 little bit more because they're far less black people in 0:01:42.600 --> 0:01:43.960 white Europeans paintings. 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:47.040 Yeah. So like when they do show up, I got questions, 0:01:47.640 --> 0:01:50.040 And a lot of times they are like just in 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:54.040 the background. They're basically shadows or servants. Sometimes there are 0:01:54.160 --> 0:01:56.680 the subject of portraits, though they might look at you 0:01:56.760 --> 0:02:00.560 longingly or thoughtfully, or with some expression that you just 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:03.520 can't put your finger on. But however they show up, 0:02:03.920 --> 0:02:06.800 I wonder what their story is, who's the model for 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:10.200 the black person and the painting. Fortunately, plenty of folks 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:12.280 who do this kind of research for a living wanted 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:15.440 to go down that exact rabbit hole. So today we're 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:18.880 going on a little journey through these art models' lives 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:21.560 just to get to know a little more about a 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:24.440 few of the women who have gone unnamed on wall 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:29.200 text and overlooked in art scholarship. I'm Katie and I'm Eves, 0:02:29.680 --> 0:02:33.000 and today we're training our eye on the Black muse. 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:38.440 The black woman that you described in that painting Olympia 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:42.440 is named Lore. She's tending to Olympia. In the painting, 0:02:43.360 --> 0:02:46.160 Olympia is a sex worker. That's why she's nude on 0:02:46.160 --> 0:02:47.840 the bed. Why she got shoes on the bed that 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:51.680 I don't know, no manner I mean also may have 0:02:51.680 --> 0:02:53.720 something to do with class, like showing, oh, I can 0:02:54.360 --> 0:02:55.720 you know? This is what I do in my bed. 0:02:55.760 --> 0:02:57.919 I keep my shoes on. I always got to be prepared, 0:02:58.480 --> 0:03:03.200 So I'm not sure about that. But lour is Olympia's servant, 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:06.960 and in the book Posing Modernity, the curator doctor Denise 0:03:07.000 --> 0:03:10.240 Morrell points out how scholars really didn't talk about what 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:14.520 Laura's presence in the painting means. But Laura also shows 0:03:14.600 --> 0:03:17.680 up in Maynee's eighteen sixty one and eighteen sixty two 0:03:17.760 --> 0:03:22.840 painting Children in the Tuilerie Gardens, and Laura is also 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:25.760 the subject of a portrait Maynee painted the same year 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:30.480 that he created Olympia. Katie here is Children in the 0:03:30.520 --> 0:03:34.280 Tuilerie Gardens and the portrait of Lore. Do you notice 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:35.600 any differences between the two? 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:39.000 So in the gardens painting, she's off to the side, 0:03:40.640 --> 0:03:42.960 like if you crop this, she would definitely get cut out, 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:45.400 and it seems like she's tending to some white child. 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:49.760 And then in the portrait you see her. She has 0:03:49.800 --> 0:03:54.120 on nice clothes, little chain, little hair wrap, little ear rings. 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:58.080 You know, got a little mona. Lisa smiles moment going. 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:02.560 So what do you notice about the difference between Low 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:04.560 herself in the two images. 0:04:05.160 --> 0:04:11.000 In the Garden's image, her clothing is depicting that of 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:14.520 a servant. And also she has no face. 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:20.279 Yes, so Children in the Tuilerie Gardens was painted before 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:25.440 the portrait. So as you mentioned, just now, Katie in Children, 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:28.640 she doesn't have a face. She has a head wrap on. 0:04:28.839 --> 0:04:31.640 You can kind of see the abstracted forms of what 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:35.440 she's wearing all of the well, a lot of the 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:38.520 other people in the painting are like that as well. 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:40.520 When she's in this nature setting. But like you said, 0:04:40.520 --> 0:04:42.919 she is kind of on the margins here, and in 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:46.039 the portrait she's right in the center. Her gaze is 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:50.400 off center, but she is the focus of the portrait. 0:04:50.560 --> 0:04:54.760 So it's almost like from Children to the portrait, Lore 0:04:55.000 --> 0:04:58.200 came to life. Manee wrote in his notebook that Laura 0:04:58.440 --> 0:05:02.160 was a very beautiful black woman, but of course Lore 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:05.400 was more than just her appearance. Slavery was abolished in 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:09.239 French territories in eighteen forty eight. Now, look, that wasn't 0:05:09.400 --> 0:05:13.000 the first time that slavery was abolished in the French territories, 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:15.800 and later on you'll hear me talk about it being 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:18.240 abolished at different times. But don't be confused. This is 0:05:18.480 --> 0:05:21.800 one time that slavery was abolished in French territories and 0:05:21.839 --> 0:05:24.400 because of that, the lore that's in these paintings was 0:05:24.440 --> 0:05:28.080 a free black woman. She lived at eleven Rue Vontemiel 0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:32.159 in Paris, not too far from Manet studio. There was 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:35.200 a small but growing community of free black folks in 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:37.440 her part of the city, which was on the north side. 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:40.040 And it's great that we know her name and where 0:05:40.080 --> 0:05:42.880 she lived, but there isn't a lot of information about 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:48.400 her life outside of those details. But we do know 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:51.480 a little bit more about Fanny Eaton. More on this 0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:52.960 muse after the break. 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:05.000 So Fanny Eaton, where would I have seen her? 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:09.080 You might have seen her in paintings by Dante, Gabrielle Rosetti, 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:14.039 Rebecca Solomon, Simeon Solomon, and Johanna mary Wells. She was 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:17.680 the muse for a lot of pre Raphaelite artists. Here's 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:20.479 a side view of Fanny Katie shown in the painting 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:23.800 Head of a Mulatta Woman by Joanna mary Wells. How 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:25.680 does Fanny look to you? She cute? 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:29.839 She cute. You know, she got a nice little shawl on, 0:06:30.440 --> 0:06:35.080 a nice little I would say, see through shawl, nice 0:06:35.080 --> 0:06:39.600 little pearl ear rings. You know, her gaze is like downcast. 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:42.320 Maybe she's very pensive in this moment, but you know 0:06:42.640 --> 0:06:43.320 she's taking it. 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:48.280 Yeah, and the background of this is like pretty somber looking, 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:52.080 as like a gray greenish brown situation. But it doesn't 0:06:52.080 --> 0:06:53.760 really come off as sad to me. It just comes 0:06:53.760 --> 0:06:56.120 off as like a little ritzy. I think, you know, 0:06:56.360 --> 0:07:01.040 the outfit she's wearing, it's giving chaffon or silk or 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:05.280 something like that. And yeah, she looks like she is 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:08.360 well off, she's well stationed in life. It's what she 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:12.640 looks like in this painting. So Fanny, though, was born 0:07:12.720 --> 0:07:16.000 in Jamaica in eighteen thirty five, and her mother was 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:18.520 probably born in a slavery and her doubts probably a 0:07:18.560 --> 0:07:20.920 white man, but there are a lot of questions around 0:07:21.280 --> 0:07:25.040 her actual ancestry. But either way, Fanny and her mother 0:07:25.240 --> 0:07:27.800 probably made their way to England in the eighteen forties 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:30.400 and by the time Fanny was sixteen, she was working 0:07:30.440 --> 0:07:33.160 as a servant in London. She married a coach driver 0:07:33.280 --> 0:07:35.800 named James Eaton, and the two of them had ten 0:07:35.960 --> 0:07:40.400 children together over the course of twenty years. Ten kids. 0:07:40.640 --> 0:07:44.760 So she went from being a servant to having ten 0:07:44.840 --> 0:07:45.720 kids to modeling. 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:50.520 Yeah, I have It's a path, isn't it. She started 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:53.239 working as a model at the Royal Academy of Arts, 0:07:53.320 --> 0:07:55.880 which is an institution in London. I can say that 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:58.040 I don't know how she got that job and why 0:07:58.080 --> 0:08:01.400 she chose it is pretty unclear, but what is clear 0:08:01.560 --> 0:08:04.600 is that she had a bunch of kids, so I'm 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:07.520 sure the money that they needed to support them it 0:08:07.560 --> 0:08:09.320 had to come from somewhere. I don't know how much 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:12.720 James Eaton was getting, but I would imagine for ten kids, 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:15.360 you know, she had them over time, so I'm sure 0:08:15.400 --> 0:08:17.040 that the money that she got from her work as 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:19.440 a model was a great help to her family. So 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:23.280 the British artist Simeon Solomon was the first known artist 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:26.360 to draw studies of Fanny. Her first appearance as an 0:08:26.440 --> 0:08:29.920 art model in public was in Simeon Solomon's painting The 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:32.840 Mother of Moses. In that painting debut in eighteen sixty 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:36.040 at a Royal Academy exhibition. But the whole thing about 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:38.280 Fanny and her being amused was that she had light 0:08:38.360 --> 0:08:41.440 skin in this racial ambiguity, and that made her like 0:08:41.480 --> 0:08:44.640 a good muse in the pre laphylite artist's eyes, because 0:08:44.679 --> 0:08:46.920 that meant that she could portray a bunch of different 0:08:46.960 --> 0:08:49.640 figures from the Bible, and that was a rare role 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:52.480 for black women in Victorian art. In that kind of art, 0:08:52.600 --> 0:08:56.160 they weren't usually models that fit into white standards of beauty. 0:08:56.320 --> 0:08:59.440 They were, you know, othered, and they were there for 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:03.480 decor ration, often for contrasts and for a scene setting. 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:07.080 In July of eighteen sixty, Fanny was paid fifteen shillings 0:09:07.120 --> 0:09:09.680 each for three sittings that she did at the Royal Academy, 0:09:09.760 --> 0:09:11.599 so you get an idea of how much she was 0:09:11.640 --> 0:09:15.200 paid for her work. But she stopped modeling sometime in 0:09:15.240 --> 0:09:19.280 the eighteen seventies, and nobody knows why, but one of 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:22.360 her daughters may have fallen in her footsteps and become 0:09:22.400 --> 0:09:25.600 an art model. And at some point Fanny's husband died 0:09:25.679 --> 0:09:29.040 and Fanny started working as a seamstress and moved to 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:32.120 the Isle of White to do domestic work for a family. 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:34.679 So as you can see, there are a lot of 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:37.679 gaps in her story, as there are for a lot 0:09:37.679 --> 0:09:41.440 of black and mixed race women in the past. But 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:43.040 there is a little bit we know about her in 0:09:43.080 --> 0:09:45.160 any amount, any measure that we can uncover. I think 0:09:45.160 --> 0:09:46.480 it's worthwhile talking about. 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:50.160 Yeah, looking at her, I wouldn't think she was black. 0:09:50.360 --> 0:09:52.640 But it's interesting too because I don't know how race 0:09:52.760 --> 0:09:55.200 was perceived back then in that part of the world. 0:09:55.920 --> 0:09:59.240 So do you think people saw her as a black woman, 0:09:59.320 --> 0:10:02.400 as a mixed race? Was she like low key passing 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:04.839 in some of these modeling instances? 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:07.959 So I think people saw her as a black woman. 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:12.440 They saw her as having dark skin, So I know, 0:10:12.559 --> 0:10:15.160 right the bar is somewhere, but yeah, they saw her 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:17.880 as dark skin. So I'm going to show you this 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:20.640 picture of Fanny Eaton, is a sketch of her that 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:23.240 looks a little different than the picture that we were 0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:25.160 talking about just now, the portrait where she's got that 0:10:25.280 --> 0:10:28.040 nice shawl on and the nice pearl earrings on. So 0:10:28.600 --> 0:10:31.720 looking at this sketch of Fanny Eaton, what do you see? 0:10:32.040 --> 0:10:34.760 And then after you tell me what you see, we'll 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:36.600 talk about if you feel any differently. 0:10:37.800 --> 0:10:41.640 So in this picture she's also looking off to the side. 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:44.439 Her hair is more visible, like the texture of it, 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:48.479 more coarse. She still has on nice clothes and jewelry, 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:51.800 and her skin is still light in this picture. But yeah, 0:10:51.840 --> 0:10:54.560 I can see her being racialized. It's on her hair. 0:10:54.920 --> 0:10:58.240 Yeah. And I don't know how much maneuvering there really 0:10:58.360 --> 0:11:01.120 was back then, as like in comparison to the kind 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:03.000 of colorism that we have today where we really be 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:06.080 breaking it down. But if I were to see the 0:11:06.120 --> 0:11:09.760 portrait of Fanny eaton that side view ahead of a 0:11:09.800 --> 0:11:13.680 Mulata woman, I wouldn't immediately say, oh, she's definitely black, 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:16.840 But once reading into it a little bit more, I 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:18.840 think I would say I would see like the hair 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:22.640 texture around the edges of her hair and think that 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:27.240 she was okay. But there were people, even the artists 0:11:27.240 --> 0:11:30.120 who painted her, who kind of didn't really understand what 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:34.840 her racial mixture was either, because there was one of 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:37.720 the artists, Rosetti, who said to someone else that, oh, 0:11:38.160 --> 0:11:42.480 she's not a Hindu, she's a Mulato. And in other 0:11:42.920 --> 0:11:45.520 episodes of this podcast, we've kind of talked about how 0:11:45.520 --> 0:11:49.719 black people did past and when the orientalism was jumping out. 0:11:49.760 --> 0:11:52.640 Black people would pass for what they would call Hindus, 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:55.280 or they would say that they were Indian and things 0:11:55.360 --> 0:11:57.880 like that. But we don't have any document of what 0:11:58.000 --> 0:12:01.559 Fanny Eaton herself said or how she thought about her race. 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:04.200 There's a lot of information that's missing, and I don't 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:10.360 want to speculate around it, but there is no evidence 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:15.040 that I saw that she denied her race or anything 0:12:15.120 --> 0:12:18.040 like that. So people would just say things about her 0:12:18.080 --> 0:12:20.080 appearance and that how they liked it. Like somebody says 0:12:20.120 --> 0:12:23.120 she had a very fine head and figure, which sounds 0:12:23.280 --> 0:12:26.600 very objectifying, But I mean, I guess that's what you're 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:29.360 doing there, the object of your painting. Yeah, but I 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:31.560 do think that takes on another level when you're talking 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:35.800 about black people and that's what you're gazing at. 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:37.720 And I guess if she was like the stand in 0:12:37.840 --> 0:12:41.120 for all these other figures, like maybe she had their 0:12:41.160 --> 0:12:44.360 proportions or something that fit well into what they're trying 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:44.640 to get. 0:12:45.040 --> 0:12:49.520 Yeah, yeah, after the break, we have another black muse. 0:12:50.240 --> 0:13:02.640 Stay tuned, So Fanny Eaton lore. There are a couple 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:04.839 of black muses whose stories we know a little bit about. 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:07.679 I imagine there are some that have been lost to time, though. 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:11.840 Yeah, there are plenty of unnamed black women in white artists' 0:13:11.960 --> 0:13:14.480 nineteenth century paintings, and a lot of the time their 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:17.600 names remain buried. There are no records of who they were, 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:20.240 and anything that they may have written about their time 0:13:20.240 --> 0:13:23.640 as models has disappeared or never existed in the first place. 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:27.280 And that was the case for this painting by Marie Guillamine. 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:31.120 Benoit ben Wah was a French neoclassical painter. In eighteen hundred, 0:13:31.240 --> 0:13:34.520 she created portrait do negress Or, a portrait of a 0:13:34.559 --> 0:13:38.200 black woman. Ben Wah never took note of her model's name. Katie, 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:40.040 tell me what you see in this portrait? 0:13:40.440 --> 0:13:43.120 So I see a black woman sitting down. She also 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:46.559 has on a head wrap, earrings, a white dress, and 0:13:46.679 --> 0:13:48.400 one of her breasts are exposed. 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:52.000 And how do you feel when you're looking at her expression? 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:54.240 What do you feel like she's saying through her expression? 0:13:54.480 --> 0:13:58.600 I mean in the American context, but this is French. 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:00.520 But if I was looking at it and thinking she 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:03.600 was American, I think she would be saying something about 0:14:03.640 --> 0:14:09.520 like servitude and like still being seen as an object 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:14.200 for like maybe like breastfeeding babies that aren't hers, but 0:14:14.360 --> 0:14:16.560 trying to get up out of that situation and move 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:19.880 on to a different like station in life. That's what 0:14:19.920 --> 0:14:22.200 I would think in my American centric. 0:14:22.080 --> 0:14:24.960 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So in the painting, 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:28.600 she is wearing red, white, and blue, which, yes, from 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:31.760 an American perspective, I think of the American flag, but 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:35.920 in this case it has been perceived as a reference 0:14:35.960 --> 0:14:39.040 to the French flag. So it may be a symbol 0:14:39.080 --> 0:14:42.000 of the freedom that formerly enslaved people had in the country, 0:14:42.360 --> 0:14:45.960 because slavery was abolished in French territories in seventeen ninety four. 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:49.440 Plus the French Revolution had just ended in seventeen ninety nine, 0:14:49.880 --> 0:14:53.000 so this painting could have been a nod to liberty. 0:14:53.440 --> 0:14:54.760 You were talking about it too, if you were looking 0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:58.440 at it from an American perspective, because you know, we 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:01.360 still know around the time period this was slavery may 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:04.880 come up in our mind. She's not fully clothed, so 0:15:05.120 --> 0:15:07.400 there is the idea of like moving on from liberty 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:09.800 or thinking about what ways you're confined in your life 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:12.760 if you're thinking about slavery. So even you, you know, 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:16.240 from an American perspective, in twenty twenty four. It made 0:15:16.240 --> 0:15:18.760 that link between the two, and that is a perspective 0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:21.520 that some people took on the meaning of this painting. 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:25.920 But in eighteen oh two, a Napoleon Bonaparte said, just kidding, 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:30.000 run that back, and he reinstated at slavery. So this 0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:33.560 could also be perceived to be about slavery's return, because 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:36.840 this painting, to remind you was done in eighteen hundred, 0:15:36.920 --> 0:15:39.960 so it was just two years later when slavery returned. So, 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:44.440 like you said, her breast is uncovered, and in eighteen 0:15:44.560 --> 0:15:48.400 hundred this was considered pretty inappropriate. But Benoi I could 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:50.480 have done that as an allusion to how black folks 0:15:50.520 --> 0:15:55.040 were inspected at slave markets. But either way, some critics 0:15:55.080 --> 0:15:58.720 at the time were offended by her nudity. Some didn't 0:15:58.800 --> 0:16:02.840 like how her skim, they didn't like that the image 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:07.800 had hints of eroticism. But folks weren't really worried about 0:16:07.880 --> 0:16:10.240 who she was back in eighteen hundred. They were just 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:12.560 worried about the fact that she was black and how 0:16:12.560 --> 0:16:16.760 that affected the art. One critic name Jean Baptiste Bouttard said, 0:16:17.120 --> 0:16:20.600 whom can one trust in life after such horror? It 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:24.320 is a white and pretty hand which has created this blackness. 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:33.840 So he's talking about how offended he is by this painting. 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:38.960 There's like this contrast between the subject of purity and 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:42.840 liberty and the delicate nature of her draped clothing, and 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:45.120 that didn't go with the ways that white folks viewed 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:49.120 black skin as horrifying and ugly. So in this case, 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:52.440 her skin's pretty dark, so unlike Fanny Eaton, who was 0:16:52.520 --> 0:16:55.440 light skinned, there is not really any ambiguity around what 0:16:55.560 --> 0:17:00.560 her background is. So people were clearly jumping in on 0:17:00.600 --> 0:17:03.520 that and the criticism that they had. They really couldn't 0:17:03.560 --> 0:17:05.200 take the skin, the fact that her skin was dark. 0:17:05.200 --> 0:17:07.760 They thought it was an affront to the whole artistic medium, 0:17:07.800 --> 0:17:10.680 to the esthetic, to the industry, because this white woman 0:17:10.960 --> 0:17:15.000 was painting this dark skin, especially within this context, and 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:18.840 it hazard to say somebody of her skin tone wouldn't 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:23.320 be considered a person who could go between different biblical 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:27.720 figures and create that ambiguity like Fanny Eaton would. So 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:30.320 if you had to guess, Katie, what do you think 0:17:30.520 --> 0:17:33.080 this woman in the painting's name is? 0:17:33.840 --> 0:17:36.680 I don't really know French names like that, so I'll 0:17:36.680 --> 0:17:42.359 pick one that is not French. Okay, I will say Hagar, it. 0:17:42.280 --> 0:17:44.840 Wasn't Hagar, good guess, but she no longer has to 0:17:44.880 --> 0:17:48.439 be referred to in the title just as Negress, so 0:17:48.560 --> 0:17:52.240 her name is Madeleine. Madeline might have been born into 0:17:52.240 --> 0:17:56.040 slavery and Guadaloupe, and ben Wah's brother in law may 0:17:56.080 --> 0:18:00.239 have brought her to France after that, and if she 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:03.520 went there as a slave or a servant, I'm not 0:18:03.760 --> 0:18:07.160 fully sure. Maybe she was freed in seventeen ninety four 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:10.600 when slavery was abolished in French colonies. But as you 0:18:10.600 --> 0:18:12.280 can see, there are a lot of maybes in the 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:16.520 story that we do know about Madeline. This painting of 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:20.400 her is in the Louverus collection and on the museum site, 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:26.359 the painting is actually titled Portrait June femme noir, not Negress. 0:18:26.720 --> 0:18:29.520 It seems like negress and it was still kind of 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:35.520 a diminutive, derogatory term even in the French language. When 0:18:35.600 --> 0:18:38.320 you go back and read old sources, even American ones, 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:40.320 and they're talking about black women, they often use the 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:45.199 term negress. In an American English context, I feel like 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:51.800 it can kind of sound a little bit more uppny, so, 0:18:52.480 --> 0:18:55.920 but yeah, I think it is interesting though, to see 0:18:56.080 --> 0:18:58.119 the people that we talked about today are just a 0:18:58.160 --> 0:18:59.639 few of all of the muses, and there are so 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:03.960 many who weren't named. And of course there were muses, 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:05.800 there were a lot of them who were women, but 0:19:05.840 --> 0:19:11.200 there were also people who were sitters for a lot 0:19:11.200 --> 0:19:16.240 of portraits who were black men. And these kinds of 0:19:16.240 --> 0:19:19.960 people have been the objects of artists I over the years. 0:19:20.920 --> 0:19:23.919 It's interesting because you know, the word muse kind of 0:19:23.960 --> 0:19:28.959 has this connotation of uplifting and there's someone who I admire, 0:19:29.240 --> 0:19:34.119 there's someone who I have a lot of affection for potentially, 0:19:34.520 --> 0:19:36.399 or that I have stuff to learn from it. It's really, 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:40.200 I feel like a glowing word. And these models were 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:42.920 the inspiration for the artists. But at the same time, 0:19:43.080 --> 0:19:46.639 there was still a hierarchy, like there was still a 0:19:46.680 --> 0:19:50.320 difference of authority between the artists and the sitter. They 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:52.480 are still the ones that are working for money. And 0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:56.159 we talked about how Fanny Eaton looks pretty upstanding and 0:19:56.240 --> 0:20:00.760 classy in her picture. She has on the per earrings 0:20:00.760 --> 0:20:05.840 and she has on the iridescent shawl, and then also madeleine. 0:20:06.359 --> 0:20:10.560 She is kind of draped in clothing that wouldn't necessarily 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:12.560 be working class. But these women were working class, like 0:20:12.600 --> 0:20:17.520 ten children making fifteen shillings for three each for three sittings. 0:20:18.400 --> 0:20:20.359 They had husbands, they had to go back home at 0:20:20.359 --> 0:20:23.399 the end of the day. They changed their professions in 0:20:23.400 --> 0:20:27.639 some cases because for what reasons we don't know, but 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:31.560 they were still inferior to the artists who were creating 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:33.240 the work and obviously to a lot of people who 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:36.000 were viewing the work. And I've seen some sources that 0:20:36.040 --> 0:20:40.320 talk about Madeleines placed in the halls, all next to 0:20:40.400 --> 0:20:43.280 all the other images, maybe on whatever floor it was 0:20:43.320 --> 0:20:46.639 on in the Louvra and Madelines the only one with 0:20:47.000 --> 0:20:51.760 dark skin, and definitely Scan that's that dark, So there 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:56.000 is this dark contrast. She immediately stands out. It's easy 0:20:56.040 --> 0:20:56.360 to other. 0:20:56.920 --> 0:21:02.520 Yeah, it's also like interesting to see how models are 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:06.280 different now, like as far as the stories they're telling. 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:10.639 I feel like models now aren't seen as inferior, especially 0:21:10.720 --> 0:21:13.720 during like the supermodel age of like the nineties. I 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:15.760 feel like Madeline would have been that girl, like you 0:21:15.800 --> 0:21:18.720 wouldn't have to go back home and work, and maybe 0:21:18.720 --> 0:21:20.280 you take care of okays, maybe you have a nanny. 0:21:21.080 --> 0:21:24.679 But it's interesting to see like how things are different, 0:21:24.760 --> 0:21:27.080 and just like what it means to be a model, 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:30.400 and like what story you're telling through sitting there about yourself, 0:21:30.480 --> 0:21:34.359 Like one is I'm working class and I need these shillings, 0:21:34.920 --> 0:21:37.880 and the others I'm so beautiful and everyone should aspire 0:21:37.960 --> 0:21:38.560 to look like me. 0:21:39.800 --> 0:21:42.720 So live model drawing was an important part of the 0:21:42.720 --> 0:21:46.120 foundational practice of some of those bougie artists who were 0:21:46.119 --> 0:21:48.840 in Europe who were going to places like the Royal Academy, 0:21:49.520 --> 0:21:52.240 and it was what they had to take as part 0:21:52.280 --> 0:21:56.000 of their course work. So it was a kind of 0:21:56.080 --> 0:21:58.199 a mundane job as opposed to something that was more 0:21:58.280 --> 0:22:00.399 uplifted because you had these people who were supposed to 0:22:00.480 --> 0:22:03.280 be turning into great artists and you were just a 0:22:03.280 --> 0:22:07.320 person who's coming in to be the vessel kind of 0:22:07.640 --> 0:22:11.280 for this amazing and enlightening work that they were going 0:22:11.359 --> 0:22:15.960 to do. So yeah, back then, definitely different. One parallel though, 0:22:16.080 --> 0:22:18.600 or kind of similarity that I see specifically with Fanny 0:22:18.640 --> 0:22:22.160 Eaton story, is thinking about her ambiguity and how much 0:22:22.240 --> 0:22:25.240 in media today, like in commercials, a lot of the time, 0:22:25.320 --> 0:22:29.520 people will tend to have someone they'll fill their color 0:22:29.600 --> 0:22:34.159 quota by bringing someone in who's ambiguous. It seems like 0:22:34.200 --> 0:22:36.960 a lot of companies like to do that because these 0:22:37.000 --> 0:22:39.280 people can fill whatever role they need, but they can 0:22:39.280 --> 0:22:41.720 also not hear any backlash because they're like, oh, I 0:22:41.760 --> 0:22:47.520 got this poc in. Yeah, So that wasn't necessarily their 0:22:47.560 --> 0:22:50.520 aim back then, but in a way, yeah, they didn't 0:22:50.560 --> 0:22:54.040 care about that. It just fulfilled their goals of being 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:56.840 preaphytes and painting in the way that they did. 0:22:57.920 --> 0:22:59.600 Do you know how they found out Madeline's name? 0:23:00.000 --> 0:23:02.000 I think it might have been doctor Denise Morrell who 0:23:02.119 --> 0:23:05.000