Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast

This bust is perhaps the most well-known nineteenth-century sculpture of an enslaved Black figure. A virtuosic display of artistic achievement, the composition was modeled after an unidentified woman whose features Carpeaux recorded in exquisite detail. Yet this bust is not a portrait. Rather, it depicts the Black figure as an enslaved and racialized "type." Created twenty years after the abolition of slavery in the French colonies (1848), the sculpture was debuted in Paris in 1869 under the title Négresse, a term that reinforces the fallacy of human difference based on skin color. The subject’s resisting pose, defiant expression, and accompanying inscription – "Pourquoi Naître Esclave!" (Why Born Enslaved!) – convey an antislavery message. However, the bust also perpetuates a Western tradition of representation that long saw the Black figure as inseparable from the ropes and chains of enslavement. The present bust is one of only two known versions carved in marble.

Carpeaux modeled Why Born Enslaved! while working on preparatory sketches for the allegorical figure of Africa on his fountain sculpture, The Four Parts of the World Supporting a Celestial Sphere. This remarkable clay sketch provides the most direct surviving visual record of the unnamed Black woman who worked as the sculptor’s model for both the bust and fountain figure. Fingerprints and toolmarks from Carpeaux’s rapid sculpting make the artist’s hand palpable as he sought to capture his sitter’s vitality and haunted expression in clay. Although her identity remains unknown, as this sketch makes evident, the model for Why Born Enslaved! was a compelling contributor in Carpeaux’s studio.

Carpeaux modeled this dynamic terracotta sketch after the unknown woman who posed for Why Born Enslaved! An early, full-length study relating to the bust, it already displays the figure’s hunched shoulders and anguished, upward gaze. The truncated arms give the figure a heightened sense of vulnerability. While this figure’s kneeling pose finds precedent in the classical motif of the crouching Venus surprised at her bath, it is also characteristic of depictions of Black figures in Western sculpture, who often appear vanquished, subordinated, or enslaved. Nineteenth-century audiences would have also recognized its direct relationship to the profusion of antislavery imagery derived from the kneeling and beseeching Black man in shackles on the 1787 Wedgwood antislavery medallion, a version of which is also included in the exhibition.

On the back of a letter, Carpeaux made a cursory sketch for Why Born Enslaved! next to an illustration of a standing nude, seemingly drawn from the same model. With arms bound before the body, the figure’s pose recalls both the horrific imagery of women being sold into slavery at auction and representations of the Ethiopian princess Andromeda, from Greek mythology, who was chained to a rock in sacrifice to a sea monster. Iterations of the figure, bound in different ways, evidence Carpeaux’s fascination with the subject of enslavement. That he was one of many European artists to depict captive female figures during the post-emancipation period suggests that abolition provided a pretext for artists and their audiences to indulge in images of bondage.

In 1787, the Wedgwood ceramics firm issued a cameo medallion featuring a kneeling and shackled Black man with the inscription, "Am I not a man and a brother?" After its adoption as the seal of the London-based Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, the image became an emblem of the antislavery movements in Britain, France, and the United States. Proliferating in printed abolitionist literature, it also appeared on a wide range of consumer goods including the carved gemstone seal depicting a kneeling Black woman with the reworked phrase, "Am I not a woman and a sister?" which also appears in this exhibition. Despite the successes of the antislavery movement, the ubiquity of the motif of the kneeling and beseeching Black figure cemented associations between Blackness, slavery, and subservience. Similar associations emerge in Carpeaux’s Why Born Enslaved!, which also pairs a bound Black figure with a petitioning inscription.

Though humble in form, luster-glazed and transfer-printed ceramics objects such as this jug served as powerful vehicles for political change. Antislavery messages reached different classes of British society. Moreover, the quotidian form of the pitcher pointed to the important role that women played as consumers in the domestic sphere in voicing public opposition to the slave trade. The image of the freed slave on one side of the jug references the most famous piece of abolitionist ceramics, Wedgwood’s antislavery medallion, produced in 1787 to commemorate the establishment of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade that year in London. William Cowper penned the abolitionist poem, “The Negro’s Complaint,” excerpted on the other side of the jug in 1788. Wedgwood’s medallion features a kneeling enslaved black man in chains, with the words “Am I not a man and a brother?” impressed in relief above him. The lusterware jug changes the word order found on Wedgwood’s medallion somewhat with the phrase, “Am not I a man and a brother?.” Though this jug was made some thirty years after Wedgwood’s medallion, abolition remained an active cause: Britain enacted the Slave Trade Act in 1807 prohibiting the slave trade, but did not completely abolish the practice of slavery until the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.

In 1787, the Wedgwood ceramics firm issued a cameo medallion featuring a kneeling and shackled Black man with the inscription, "Am I not a man and a brother?" After its adoption as the seal of the London-based Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, the image became an emblem of the antislavery movements in Britain, France, and the United States. Proliferating in printed abolitionist literature, it also appeared on a wide range of consumer goods including the carved gemstone seal depicting a kneeling Black woman with the reworked phrase, "Am I not a woman and a sister?" which also appears in this exhibition. Despite the successes of the antislavery movement, the ubiquity of the motif of the kneeling and beseeching Black figure cemented associations between Blackness, slavery, and subservience. Similar associations emerge in Carpeaux’s Why Born Enslaved!, which also pairs a bound Black figure with a petitioning inscription.

In 1787, the Wedgwood ceramics firm issued a cameo medallion featuring a kneeling and shackled Black man with the inscription, "Am I not a man and a brother?" After its adoption as the seal of the London-based Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, the image became an emblem of the antislavery movements in Britain, France, and the United States. Proliferating in printed abolitionist literature, it also appeared on a wide range of consumer goods including the carved gemstone seal depicting a kneeling Black woman with the reworked phrase, "Am I not a woman and a sister?" which also appears in this exhibition. Despite the successes of the antislavery movement, the ubiquity of the motif of the kneeling and beseeching Black figure cemented associations between Blackness, slavery, and subservience. Similar associations emerge in Carpeaux’s Why Born Enslaved!, which also pairs a bound Black figure with a petitioning inscription.

Boizot designed this porcelain group and corresponding pair of prints in 1794, the year France abolished slavery following the insurrection of enslaved persons in Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti). They depict a free Black woman and man respectively adorned with a level and Phrygian cap, symbols of equality and liberty associated with the French Revolution. The inscriptions that accompany the figures express claims to equality and freedom in grammatically inaccurate French, "Moi égale à toi. Moi libre aussi" (Me equal to you. Me also free), reflecting the perceived difference between formerly enslaved people and French citizens. Black women and men are thus represented as subjects of a racially specific freedom, not as equal participants in the French nationalist project of liberty. While Haiti remained free, Napoleon Bonaparte restored slavery in France’s other West Indian colonies in 1802.

Boizot designed this print, the accompanying Print of a Free Woman, and the corresponding porcelain group in 1794, the year France abolished slavery following the insurrection of enslaved persons in Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti). They depict a free Black woman and man respectively adorned with a level and Phrygian cap, symbols of equality and liberty associated with the French Revolution. The inscriptions that accompany the figures express claims to equality and freedom in grammatically inaccurate French, "Moi égale à toi. Moi libre aussi" (Me equal to you. Me also free), reflecting the perceived difference between formerly enslaved people and French citizens. Black women and men are thus represented as subjects of a racially specific freedom, not as equal participants in the French nationalist project of liberty. While Haiti remained free, Napoleon Bonaparte restored slavery in France’s other West Indian colonies in 1802.

Boizot designed this print, the accompanying Print of a Free Man, and the corresponding porcelain group in 1794, the year France abolished slavery following the insurrection of enslaved persons in Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti). They depict a free Black woman and man respectively adorned with a level and Phrygian cap, symbols of equality and liberty associated with the French Revolution. The inscriptions that accompany the figures express claims to equality and freedom in grammatically inaccurate French, "Moi égale à toi. Moi libre aussi" (Me equal to you. Me also free), reflecting the perceived difference between formerly enslaved people and French citizens. Black women and men are thus represented as subjects of a racially specific freedom, not as equal participants in the French nationalist project of liberty. While Haiti remained free, Napoleon Bonaparte restored slavery in France’s other West Indian colonies in 1802.

A semi-naked and emaciated Black man casts an imploring gaze upward at a triumphally posed female figure who has broken the chains of bondage beneath her foot. Flowing drapery and a Phrygian cap, representing liberty, identify her as an allegory of the French Republic. This unsigned terracotta sketch may have been an anonymous submission to an open contest that called for symbolic representations of the newly formed Second Republic, a short-lived democratic regime that abolished slavery in 1848. Its emphasis on the female figure’s role as liberator reflected French patriotic sentiment, while the representation of the Black figure as helpless and in need of sanctuary advanced imperialist notions of racial difference.

This playing card celebrates the revolutionary spirit of the enslaved people in Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) who overthrew the ruling class to achieve their freedom. It features a Black man wearing the red, blue, and white of the new French Republic and seated atop a bag of coffee with sugar cane rising at his back, a gun in his hand, and a broken yoke and shackle at his feet. This figure stands in for the Jack of Diamonds in a deck issued during the French Revolution, which features personifications of liberty and equality in place of royalty. Such depictions of revolt and self-possession were rare in Western images of emancipation, which typically presented bound Black subjects pleading for their freedom. The inscription beneath his feet declares the motto, "Egalité de couleurs" (equality of colors), a proclamation of unity for the new republic.

This study of a Black woman’s head is the only remaining trace of a lifesize figure that once stood on a garden fountain by Houdon. Cast in lead, the standing figure held a pitcher from which water poured over a bathing woman sculpted in white marble. While the bather is now in The Met collection (Gallery 548), the Black attendant was lost or destroyed in the aftermath of the French Revolution (1789). Houdon drew upon classical sculpture in creating this likeness, yet also emphasized the exoticism of his subject by giving the work an undifferentiated black surface and pierced earlobes. In 1794, the sculptor repurposed this study by submitting it to the Salon, the annual art exhibition in Paris, with an inscription on its socle, now destroyed, commemorating the French abolition of slavery.

This bust is a reduced-scale version of Houdon's Head of a Woman, also on view in this exhibtion. The inscription on its base commemorates the first abolition of slavery in the French colonies in 1794. The purchase of such reproductions from the artist’s workshop enabled patriots to signal their alignment with the abolitionist cause in the new French Republic. The sculpture’s theme, inscription, and commercial reproduction served as precedents for Carpeaux’s Why Born Enslaved!

Lewis, a sculptor of African American and Ojibwe heritage, completed Forever Free in Rome in 1867, two years after emancipation in the United States and a year before Carpeaux finished Why Born Enslaved! Whereas Carpeaux represents the theme of abolition by sculpting a bound woman, Lewis sculpts two free figures. Unlike virtually all other such images of the period, the Black man stands rather than sits or kneels. With a broken shackle in hand, he raises aloft his fist in a gesture of strength and self-determination. He rests his other hand protectively on the shoulder of his female companion who kneels and clasps her hands in gratitude. The differing postures of Lewis’s figures anticipates the divergent experiences of emancipated men and women. Yet the inscription on the base, neither pleading nor beseeching, proclaims: "Forever Free."

Ward’s depiction of an African American man was inspired by President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, issued on September 22, 1862. The broken manacles on the man’s left wrist and in his right hand offer a succinct commentary on the chief political and moral topic of the era, and proclaim the sculptor’s abolitionist sentiments. While emancipated and contemplating his future, the Black male is represented seated and seminude, reinforcing his transitional status between enslavement and full standing in citizenship and manhood.

This engraving of a woman representing Africa is one of a set showing the four continents (America, Europe, Asia and Africa) as female figures. It was engraved by Johann Justin Preissler after Edmè Bouchardon. The attributes for each figure correspond with descriptions in Cesare Ripa’s "Iconologia", an illustrated dictionary widely used by artists, first published with images in 1603.

In the eighteenth century, small-scale figurines representing the allegories of the four continents were a popular fixture in genteel spaces. While the dissemination of such iconography in print form encouraged scholarly reflection, its migration into the realm of the decorative arts prompted whimsy and pleasure. The polished surfaces and exquisite detail of this ambitious group by the Fulda Manufactory afforded European viewers the intimate, tactile experience of beholding representations of other continents, whose precious goods and natural resources they coveted.

In the eighteenth century, small-scale figurines representing the allegories of the four continents were a popular fixture in genteel spaces. While the dissemination of such iconography in print form encouraged scholarly reflection, its migration into the realm of the decorative arts prompted whimsy and pleasure. The polished surfaces and exquisite detail of this ambitious group by the Fulda Manufactory afforded European viewers the intimate, tactile experience of beholding representations of other continents, whose precious goods and natural resources they coveted.

In the eighteenth century, small-scale figurines representing the allegories of the four continents were a popular fixture in genteel spaces. While the dissemination of such iconography in print form encouraged scholarly reflection, its migration into the realm of the decorative arts prompted whimsy and pleasure. The polished surfaces and exquisite detail of this ambitious group by the Fulda Manufactory afforded European viewers the intimate, tactile experience of beholding representations of other continents, whose precious goods and natural resources they coveted. Africa’s lavish attributes, including jewelry, shells, and a cornucopia brimming with fruits, suggest Europe’s growing economic interest in the continent.

In the eighteenth century, small-scale figurines representing the allegories of the four continents were a popular fixture in genteel spaces. While the dissemination of such iconography in print form encouraged scholarly reflection, its migration into the realm of the decorative arts prompted whimsy and pleasure. The polished surfaces and exquisite detail of this ambitious group by the Fulda Manufactory afforded European viewers the intimate, tactile experience of beholding representations of other continents, whose precious goods and natural resources they coveted.

In 1867, Carpeaux was invited by Gabriel Davioud, the city architect of Paris, to design a sculpture to top a fountain between the Luxembourg Gardens and the Paris Observatory. This plaster model reflects his composition, which drew upon well-known iconography to represent the four continents as female figures whose twisting bodies suggest the rotation of the earth. Facing us is Africa, who on the completed fountain appeared with a broken shackle around one ankle — a reference to the recent emancipation of Black people across the Atlantic world. This figure is followed clockwise by Asia, Europe, and America. Their poses reflect the fountain’s final composition, in which their upraised arms support a celestial sphere emblazoned with the signs of the zodiac. Only the faces of Europe and America are articulated here. Carpeaux made the figures of Africa and Asia after living models in his studio.

Carpeaux sculpted this bust after a living person during his preparations for his monumental fountain sculpture, The Four Parts of the World, as he did with Why Born Enslaved! While Carpeaux has carefully modeled the features of his sitter, the bust’s title, Le Chinois (The Chinese Man), transforms this unknown individual into an idealized "type," or stand-in for an entire people. Indeed, Asia was ultimately represented by a lifesize female figure in the final version of the fountain sculpture. The Atelier Carpeaux, a studio established to reproduce the artist’s work, released this bust in commercial editions, in response to a growing interest in ethnographic sculpture. At the same moment that this dignified representation proliferated in elite European interiors, Chinese workers in the French West Indies labored under coercive contracts intended to facilitate the continued production of sugar after the abolition of slavery.

This male figure, whose reclining posture recalls the pose of a Greco-Roman river god, is a personification of Africa. Earlier allegories of the continents relied upon symbols, such as the lion pelt seen here. Yet Bartholdi’s emphasis on the figure of Africa’s muscular body, facial features, and hair texture reflect the increasing prominence of pseudoscientific theories that saw physical appearance as evidence of racial difference. Later produced in commercial editions, this sculpture first appeared at the base of a fountain in Colmar, France, commemorating Admiral Armand Joseph Bruat, who oversaw the expansion of the French empire into Algeria and served as a colonial governor in the French Caribbean. The standing figure of Bruat towered above reclining personifications of Africa, Oceania, Asia, and the Americas, recalling traditional representations of European rulers presiding over conquered lands and people.

Cordier first presented a plaster model of this bust at the annual art exhibition in Paris in 1848, the year slavery was finally abolished throughout the French colonies. Upon its debut, the depiction was lauded as a symbol of Europe’s newly enlightened position regarding the moral question of slavery, resulting in its replication and sale as a bronze and launching Cordier’s career as a sculptor of ethnographic busts. The sitter is Seïd Enkess, a formerly enslaved Sudanese man from Darfur, whose likeness was abstracted to embody an idealized male type. By displaying the bust under various titles, including Saïd Abdallah and Nègre de Timbouctou (Negro from Timbuktu), Cordier treated diverse cultures, peoples, and places as interchangeable personifications of Africa.

Produced prior to his first trip to North Africa, this bust exemplifies Cordier’s practice of creating fantasy portraits of colonized subjects. Executed as a pendant to Bust after Seïd Enkess, it debuted under the derogatory title Négresse des colonies (Negress from the Colonies). It later came to be widely known as Vénus africaine (African Venus), a title that marries the erotic characteristics associated with the Greek goddess of love and beauty to an exoticized depiction of the Black female body—portrayed here with a heavy-lidded gaze, bare shoulders, and drapery that nominally covers her breasts and navel. Numerous casts of the pair were produced for sale, some silvered and gilt to render them more colorful. The French state commissioned a pair for the ethnographic gallery of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.

This arresting picture was made after Gérôme returned to Paris from a twelve-week journey to the Near East in 1868. He was at the height of his career when he dressed a model in his studio with garments and accessories he had acquired abroad. The artist’s Turkish title for this picture—which translates as "headless"—evokes the poorly paid auxiliary soldiers who fought ferociously for plunder under Ottoman leadership, although it is difficult to imagine this man charging into battle wearing such an exquisite silk tunic. Gérôme’s virtuosic treatment of textures provides a sumptuous counterpoint to the figure’s dignified bearing.

Cordier cast this plaster mask after the original clay study for his bust of a woman (African Venus). By emphasizing the figure’s full lips, coiled hair, and dark skin tone, Cordier sought to create an idealized image of African beauty that would appeal to Western audiences who had grown increasingly interested in representations of Black people. Cordier believed his sculptures heralded a change in the understanding of non-Europeans, writing: "My genre had the freshness of something new, revolt against slavery, the budding science of anthropology, widening the circle of beauty by showing that it existed everywhere." Inexpensive reproductions of this mask were sold to artists working in Paris and beyond, reflecting the growing prominence of ethnography and exoticism as artistic subjects in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Charles cordier combined two personal interests —  the new science of ethnography and polychrome sculpture —  to produce an entirely original category of work. In 1848, following training at the Petite École (École Spéciale de Dessin et de Mathématiques) in Paris and with the sculptor François Rude, he exhibited, when only twenty-one, at the Paris Salon. His first submission, a plaster bust of Saïd Abdallah of the Darfour tribe, coincided with the abolition of slavery in France and its colonies, established by law on April 27 of that year. In his unpublished "Mémoires," he wrote, "My art incorporated the reality of a whole new subject, the revolt against slavery and the birth of anthropology." [1] Three years later, he was named ethnographic sculptor to the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, and in that capacity he traveled to Algeria (1856), Greece (1858 – 59), and Egypt (1865). Sketches and models made during the voyages inspired a series of portraits of the people of those and other countries that would become the mainstay and lasting achievement of his career.

As a young student in Paris, Cordier was also aware of the ongoing academic debate as to whether ancient Greek and Roman sculpture was colored or not. Antoine-Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy’s reconsideration of the fifth-century-b.c. gold-and-ivory statue of Olympian Jupiter (destroyed) had brought about a more accurate knowledge of polychromy in antique art when published in 1814.[2] Ancient Roman statues composed of variously colored marbles, such as the Old Fisherman (also known as Dying Seneca; Musée du Louvre, Paris), and Renaissance mixed-media works by Nicolas Cordier, such as Moor (ca. 1600, now Versailles), both then at the Palais du Louvre, drew his attention. [3] His 1856 mission to Algeria gave him the opportunity to study African physical types; on that trip he also found onyx deposits in recently reopened ancient quarries and, inspired by historical example, began to use the material in his sculpture. The Negro of the Sudan (1856, Musée d’Orsay, Paris) was the first work in which he fit a bronze head into an onyx bust and turban. Cordier was not alone in his taste for color in sculpture: his contemporary Jean-Léon Gérôme in France and the younger Vincenzo Gemito in Italy and Alfred Gilbert in England were similarly inclined. But Cordier was the most consistent in combining colored sculpture and ethnographic subjects.

Cordier’s most lavish multimedia busts of ethnic people found favor with collectors at the highest social level, for example, Napoléon III and Queen Victoria, who were no doubt drawn to them because of their own colonialist interests. [4] For such costly commissions he would create a model that could be varied with different stones and paints. The Goat Tender of the Colonies (La Capresse des Colonies), for instance, features a brilliantly striated chunk of Algerian onyx-marble that evokes a vibrantly colored costume; it contrasts with the darkly patinated bronze head and shoulders that are inserted into the stone. Smooth flesh and nubbly hair are set off by gold and enameled earrings. For another version of The Goat Tender, in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, Cordier selected a less variegated marble for the drapery and he complemented its golden hue by gilding the turban. [5]

The Goat Tender’s alert, upturned face and coquettish smile contrast with the sober, downturned countenance of The Jewish Woman of Algiers (La Juivre d’Alger). For the latter, a predominantly white onyx-marble is matched with a white enamel fired into the bronze floral pattern of the blouse. Brightly colored enamels make stripes in the turban and in the brooches that pin it to the hair. Inset amethyst eyes gleam against the smooth surface of the woman’s bronze skin. For a different version in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Troyes, Cordier used red enamel for the blouse, which he matched by painting part of the marble cloak red and gold. [6] For grand sculptures such as these, he delighted in varying the colors and effects.

As Cordier’s busts were increasingly sought by collectors, he began to create pairs, generally male and female, as decorative ensembles. The Goat Tender (first version exhibited in 1861) was paired with The Negro of the Sudan (first shown in 1856) in an exhibition in London in 1862. [7] The Jewish Woman of Algiers was paired after 1866 with The Arab Sheik of Cairo, in examples in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and in two now-lost pairs.[8] By contrast, the Metropolitan’s group presents a same-​sex pair representing different countries and races of the African continent.

The Museum’s two busts were exhibited in 1863 in the Exposition de la Société Artistique des Bouches-du-Rhône, Marseilles, and purchased there by the Cercle des Phocéens, a gentlemen’s gambling club in that city.[9] The first owners of the busts may have viewed them as decorative representations of the opposite sex, but Cordier’s idea in creating them was to illustrate the universality of beauty. In his words, "Because beauty is not the province of privileged race, I give to the world of art the idea of the universality of beauty. Every race has its beauty, which differs from that of other races. The most beautiful Negro is not the one who looks most like us, nor the one who presents the most pronounced characteristics associated with his race. It is the individual in whom are united such forms and traits, and a face that reflects with harmony and balance the essential moral and intellectual character of the Ethiopian race." [10]

At the time of their purchase, the Cercle des Phocéens acquired pedestals for the busts, evidently based on designs by Charles-François Rossigneux. These neo-Rococo matching pedestals in red and white marble are decorated with gilt-bronze decorations of sprays of flowers —  one with horn, flute, panpipes and thyrsus, the other with torch and bow. Cordier used this design for other pedestals. Having himself designed a number of torchères and atlantids to ornament interiors in the Second Empire style, he was mindful of the need to integrate his sculpture with the decor of the room where it would stand. As he wrote in 1864, "Polychrome sculpture is not made for gardens, but for interiors that are already lavish." [11]

Footnotes

1. "Mémoires et notes écrits par Charles Cordier, statuaire, chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, né à Cambrai le 1er novembre 1827, décédé à Alger le 19 avril 1905," copy in the archives, Documentation du Musée d’Orsay, Paris, p. 10; translated in Margerie 2004b, p. 15.

2. Quatrèmere de Quincy 1814. See Blühm 1996, pp. 15 – 22.

3. See Papet 2004, esp. pp. 53 – 54, figs. 20a, 21.

4. Busts of Saïd Abdallah and The African Venus were purchased by Queen Victoria and are now in Osborne House, East Cowes, Isle of Wight; Durand-Révillon and Margerie 2004, p. 205, nos. 480, 481. The version of The Goat Tender of the Colonies illustrated here as figure 64 was purchased for Emperor Napoléon III in July 1861; on that work, see note 5 below.

5. Ibid., p. 151, no. 64 (ill. p. 56)

6. Ibid., p. 183, no. 331 (ill. p. 62).

7. Ibid., p. 152, nos. 70, 71.

8. Colour of Sculpture 1996, pp. 172 – 74, nos. 48, 49, for the pair in Amsterdam; see also Durand-Révillon and Margerie 2004, p. 154, nos.　86 – 91, for the dating.

9. They were numbers 343 and 344 in the exhibition; Margerie 2004c, p. 231.

10. Cordier 1862, p. 66; translated in Margerie 2004b, p. 28.

11. Cordier to the comte de Nieuwerkerke, translated in Margerie 2004a, p. 133 (entry of April 1864). Similar pedestals were chosen for The Goat Tender and Negro of the Sudan (Durand-Révillon and Margerie 2004, p. 152, nos. 70, 71). See also the photograph by Léon Cordier of his father’s stand at the Exposition Universelle of 1867, showing a similar pedestal supporting Arab Sheik of Cairo (in Facing the Other 2004, p. 81).

After slavery was abolished in France’s colonies in the Caribbean, French imperialists shifted focus to the economic opportunities afforded by the violent expansion of colonial influence and rule in North Africa. Dantan-Jeune traveled to the region in 1848 to sketch its residents from life. This bust of an Ethiopian youth named Hora was produced during his stay in Cairo. The work’s inscription, "Gala" ("Galla"), is a racial epithet used to describe the Oromo people, the ethnic group to which the boy belonged. The work exhibits the artist’s interest in combining the Western convention of the classicizing portrait bust with new pseudoscientific theories of ethnography and phrenology, which sought to categorize individuals based on physical attributes such as skin tone, facial proportions, and skull shape.

While Carpeaux used terracotta for preparatory models, such as his clay sketch of the unidentified woman who posed for Why Born Enslaved!, the medium also had commercial applications. This bust was not sculpted by Carpeaux but was instead cast from a mold in his studio, which from 1869 onward produced copies of his major works as luxury consumer goods. The commercial viability of these reproductions reflected the popularity of antislavery imagery in post-emancipation France, where narratives of abolition evoked a sense of patriotism. This was particularly the case after the United States abolished slavery in 1865, seventeen years after the French abolition.

This small version of Why Born Enslaved! is the original plaster model from which other reduced-scale replicas were produced. Carpeaux coated its surface with semitranslucent layers of umber pigment that suggest the appearance of brown skin. The replication and sale of Why Born Enslaved! in miniature echoes the commodification of people of African descent that took place under slavery, reflecting the Western desire to possess and contain the Black body. Yet the sculpture’s unusual depiction of an enslaved woman’s defiant strength has also contributed to its enduring appeal. Reproductions of Why Born Enslaved! continue to be made and sold today.

This impression of a face was taken directly from a reproduction of Why Born Enslaved! Walker designed the work to be displayed on the ground in a corner like a discard, lit by a single ambient light. The plaster mold both traces and displaces Carpeaux’s bust, reinterpreting it as a hollow shell and haunting effigy. Its illumination dematerializes the sculptural surface, creating pools of light and shadow that form a ghostly presence. Like Walker’s famous paper-cut silhouettes, this work uses negative space to evoke the wounds of history. Speaking about her art’s relationship to the past, Walker has stated: "I’m not making work about reality; I’m making work about images. I’m making work about fictions that have been handed down to me."

Wiley reimagines the partially naked and bound woman in Carpeaux’s Why Born Enslaved! as a male basketball player wearing a Lakers jersey. In so doing, the artist draws a connection between the sports economy and enslavement, challenging the idea of professional athletics as a pathway to liberation. The man’s twisted pose and doubting expression suggest an ongoing struggle, possibly alluding to the unfulfilled promises of abolition. The work is titled After La Négresse, 1872 in reference to The Met’s terracotta bust, also in this exhibition. Like its referent, Wiley’s sculpture was also produced in multiples, which are cast from the typically discarded material of marble dust.