Why Born Enslaved!
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
European Art
On View: European Art Galleries, 5th floor
The identity of the Black woman who posed for this sculpture is unknown, but recent scholarship suggests that she might have been born into slavery in the French Antilles and, following her emancipation, migrated to France. Created twenty years after France abolished slavery in 1848, and only three years following emancipation in the United States in 1865, the bust was meant to appeal to the antislavery views of a progressive white audience. Yet despite its sensitive portrayal of an individual, the bust nonetheless objectifies the Black female body as an exoticized other, her single bare breast a symbol of both liberty and colonial fantasy.
This woman was also the model for the allegorical figure of Africa on a large fountain representing the four continents that Carpeaux designed for a park in Paris. This plaster is one of the independent sculptures he made based on that figure.
MEDIUM
Plaster with patina; red stone base
DATES
1868
DIMENSIONS
sculpture: 13 3/4 × 9 1/4 × 7 in. (34.9 × 23.5 × 17.8 cm)
base: 9 × 12 1/2 × 12 1/2 in. (22.9 × 31.8 × 31.8 cm)
weight with base: 43.5 lb. (19.73kg)
mount: 14 × 9 × 7 1/2 in. (35.6 × 22.9 × 19.1 cm)
(show scale)
INSCRIPTIONS
Incised back of plaster base: "J-B Carpeaux 1868"
Incised on front of base: "Pourquoi nâitre esclave"
ACCESSION NUMBER
1993.83a-b
CREDIT LINE
Gift of Benno Bordiga, by exchange and Mary Smith Dorward Fund
CAPTION
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (French, 1827-1875). Why Born Enslaved!, 1868. Plaster with patina; red stone base, sculpture: 13 3/4 × 9 1/4 × 7 in. (34.9 × 23.5 × 17.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Benno Bordiga, by exchange and Mary Smith Dorward Fund, 1993.83a-b. Creative Commons-BY (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 1993.83a-b_edited_SL3.jpg)
IMAGE
overall, 1993.83a-b_edited_SL3.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2015
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RIGHTS STATEMENT
Creative Commons-BY
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