"And the Jet Would Be Invaluable": Blackness, Bondage, and The Beloved. Issue 3 (2nd July 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Rarey, Matthew Francis
• Is Part Of: Art bulletin. Volume 102:Issue 3(2020)
• Page Start: 28
• Page End: 53
• Publication Date: 2020-07-02
• Subjects: Art -- Periodicals; 705
• DOI: 10.1080/00043079.2020.1711486
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0004-3079

Abstract

Abstract : In March 1865, Dante Gabriel Rossetti encountered a black child in London. One year later, a portrait of this child appeared as an attendant figure in his painting The Beloved (1865–66). The context of the artist's engagements with black subjects and Victorian-era discourses of abolition, race, minstrelsy, sexuality, and labor illuminates his search for this child, as well as the treatment of his portrait. Rossetti strategically attempted a figuration of blackness independent of political implication and, by proxy, as a way to escape the charged moral discourses about slavery and race he felt surrounded him.