Reverse painting on glass in a black and gold frame of a lady with brown curly hair and dark eyes wearing a red feather plume, red draped shawl, and red and green long dress. She holds a red, white and blue flag in her right hand and rests her hand on a stone dedicated to the memory of George Washington.
paintings (visual works)
glass (material)
oil paint (paint)
reverse painting on glass (image-making)
flags
Native American
waterfalls (natural bodies of water)
figure- and animal-derived motifs
women (female humans)
Oil
Glass
Painted
Woman
Flag
Native American
Waterfall
PICTURE
This reverse painting on glass, also known as eglomise, was created in 1800 by P. Stampa, a British printer and publisher who specialized in decorative mezzotints from 1798-1817. The painting depicts Columbia, an allegorical female figure representing the United States, alongside an African American child wearing a feathered headdress. The two figures lean against a stone dedicated to the memory of George Washington with Niagara Falls in the background.
Shortly after the British North American colonies gained independence from England in the late-eighteenth century, the female figure of Columbia became synonymous with American identity. However, personifications of North America developed as early as the sixteenth century, with early modern artists depicting Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas as female figures in prints, paintings, and sculptures. Artists depicted Europe as illustrious and cultivated to glorify its greatness, whereas, artists depicted North America as unrefined and uncivilized. America(s), depicted as an "Indian Princess," often wore a feathered headdress, feathered skirt, and a bow and arrow. The figure was regularly situated within a tropical landscape, sometimes holding a parrot or sitting on an enlarged alligator or oversized armadillo, based on their own ideas of Indigenous life in North America. By the eighteenth century, as the New World became less threatening to Europe, artists and allegorists began portraying North America as the neoclassical, white, female figure that became known as Columbia.
The African American child beside Columbia, dressed in the guise of a Native American figure, may be a representation of the "noble savage" trope. A highly offensive term first appearing in seventeenth century literature, the "noble savage" referred to someone who lives in nature, uncorrupted by civilization. French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau later embraced the concept to highlight the corruption of European civilization in much of his eighteenth century discourse. Americans similarly embraced the stereotype after gaining Independence, as many artists in the late-eighteenth-and early-nineteenth-centuries created romanticized and falsified images of Indigenous peoples. The "primitive" and "simple" life of the ennobled "savage," many artists believed, juxtaposed the corruption of urban civilization.
The African American figure in the painting might also be represented as a child on account of the dominant caricatures that depicted people of color as children in the eighteenth-and nineteenth-centuries. These offensive and harmful portrayals were intended to justify slavery, by instilling a paternalistic attitude in white masters and perpetuating the belief that they could serve as parental figures for enslaved people. This not only justified chattel slavery, but made it appear morally righteous. Regardless of whatever symbolism the artist had intended for the allegorical figures in this painting, it is no doubt suggestive of the widespread belief that people of color were considered lesser-than in the new nation.
This object was probably acquired by Richard Tucker during his trip to Europe in 1857 and installed at Castle Tucker after Tucker and his new wife, Mollie Armstrong, moved to the house in 1858. It was typical for American bachelors on their Grand Tour to acquire art, prints, and other souvenirs to represent their learnedness and culture. The subject matter may have mattered less to Tucker than the overall goal of having Americana displayed in his home. The piece remains on view at Castle Tucker, preserved for posterity by descendent Jane Standish Tucker who began restoring the house in the 1960s in preparation for opening it for visitors.
Printed beneath title at bottom: ""Published April 21, 1800, by P. Stampa, 30, Leather Lane, London."" Written on the memorial stone are the words: ""To the/ Memory of/ George Washington/ Born 11th Feby. 1732./ Died 13th Decr./ 1799""
Washington, George, 1732-1799
Original to Castle Tucker (Wiscasset, Me.),
Stampa, P. (Publisher)
London, England
16.125 x 12.25 (HxW) (inches)
Gift of Miss Jane S. Tucker
1998.517.3
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