Huntington Adds a Carpeaux
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| Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Why Born Enslaved!, 1872 (model 1868). The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, purchased with funds from the Art Collectors' Council, with additional support from the Frances Crandall Dyke Bequest, and the Caillouette Acquisition Endowment for British and Continental Art. Photo courtesy of Schoelkopf Gallery |
The President wants to erase slavery from the nation's museums. Actually slavery was not a common theme for art prior to the 20th century. An exception is Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux's Why Born Enslaved!, recently purchased for the Huntington by its Art Collectors' Council. With few commissions for monumental sculpture after the fall of the Second Empire, Carpeaux and studio turned to domestically scaled multiples that could be marketed to bourgeois collectors. One of the most popular was Why Born Enslaved!, an image of a bound African woman representing the cruelty of slavery. It was produced in terracotta, plaster, bronze, and marble. The copies vary somewhat in size. The Huntington's terracotta is 23-1/2 in. high.
The sculpture's model is unrecorded, but some scholars believe she is the same woman depicted in Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier's 1861 Woman From the French Colonies.
Carpeaux's image has been popular with American and European curators. Just in the U.S., there are examples at the museums of New York (the Met has a marble and a terracotta), Brooklyn, Cleveland, Indianapolis, and Houston. It inspired an uncanny Kara Walker sculpture and a 2022 show at the Metropolitan Museum.
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| Grafton Tyler Brown, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone from Lookout Point, 1887. The Huntington |
Black artists of the time generally had to avoid politics to make a living. The Huntington has also acquired a landscape painting by Grafton Tyler Brown (1841–1918), one of the first African Americans to have a successful art career in the Western U.S. The vertical-format Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone from Lookout Point, measuring 30 by 18 in., shows a Wyoming feature likened to Arizona's Grand Canyon. The canyon walls' yellow and rose hues are due to iron deposits.
Brown's painting was recently offered by Dolan/Maxwell for $95,000. At the Huntington, it joins works by two other Black landscape painters of the 19th century: Robert Scott Duncanson (1821–1872) and Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828–1901).
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| Toshio Aoki, Untitled (Goddess), about 1900. The Huntington |
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| Todd Gray, Rome Work (Niobe and her Chirren), 2023. The Huntington. (c) Todd Gray. Photo: Jeff McLane |
Comments
The Met's version in white marble is a triumph. But when it appeared at a Christie's sale in Paris in 2018, it was quite covered in dirt/dust (see pic from 2018, below).
But one can appreciate the remarkable improvement with a bit of tender care, once it arrived at the Met (see other link).
https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6157267?ldp_breadcrumb=back
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/824469
The Met has a slightly smaller version of the Huntington's work.
But the Met's description of its version notes:
"Title: Why Born Enslaved!
"Artist: Workshop of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
"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."
Questions: Are molds also sculptures? Is the Huntington's work a workshop version?
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Tacca and Susini both worked after molds of their master Giambologna. I wouldn't kick either of those sculptors out of bed for eating biscuits. Haar.
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pourquoi_na%C3%AEtre_esclave_Ny_Carlsberg_Glyptotek_MIN1671_n1.jpg
> generally had to avoid
> politics to make a living.
Politics has long been and is a big part of everything, including in the arts and culture. For example:
"Known as the Elgin Marbles in the UK, the sculptures were removed from the Parthenon...by Lord Elgin during the Ottoman occupation of Greece. The British Museum has housed the artifacts ever since, asserting their acquisition was legal."
^ I just read something about Britain's King Henry VIII, and by any definition he fit the definition of a sociopath, if not outright psychopath. Yet among the British people in the 1500s, he was popular. Over 300 years later, Britain did some diabolical things to the people of China. In the 21st century, it may be the other way around.
So political gamesmanship has long been a factor in the world, among all peoples and nations.
Now in 2025, is an artwork rated as good (or not) based on (or not?) the race/gender/sexuality of the artist? But since a lot of talent through the centuries has caused more supply than demand (eg, for museums), it does come down to the taste (and politics) of the gatekeepers.
Or Lucas ("treacle") versus MOCA ("even my kid can do that!").
As for LACMA, It's annoying when they place modern or contemporary artworks not in the Broad building but in a section (originally the Pereira-1986 campus) related to the nationality or ancestry of an artist.
However, Toshio Aoki's work is more of a chameleon. I can see it being displayed among modern art, decorative art or in the Japanese/Price building. Still, even though its style hearkens back to old Japan, the fact the artist was an American would nonetheless make me somewhat irritated if it were (and if it had been acquired by LACMA) displayed in the Goff/Price building. But since the Huntington doesn't do encyclopedic, that's less of an issue.
As for the Huntington's books and manuscripts, I'm curious how they're going to re-do their collection's exhibition spaces..