Kitchen Ball at White Sulphur Springs, Virginia (work of art)

Ideas clave sobre esta obra de arte

• This genre painting depicts Black men and women dancing in the kitchen of a resort. 
• White Sulphur Springs is a city in West Virginia. It was a popular summer destination for wealthy white Southerners in the 1800s. Plantation owners often visited the mountain resorts in White Sulphur Springs, to escape the heat and humidity.
• This painting was created during slavery in America. 
• The artist depicted each person in the painting as a unique individual in a detailed outfit. Most images of Black people created at the time were racist caricatures. A scene depicting the private lives of Black individuals was rare in the pre-Civil War South.
• Christian Friedrich Mayr was a German-American artist known for his portraits and genre paintings. He also worked in daguerreotype, an early version of photography.

Más información

This rare antebellum scene focuses entirely on a group of African Americans, likely a mix of enslaved people and free Black workers who staffed a resort in what is now West Virginia or accompanied white enslavers who visited. A portraitist turned genre painter, Mayr portrayed each impeccably dressed subject in a remarkably individualized manner, departing from common representations that caricatured Black figures during the period.

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