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From September 1859 through June 1860, English artist Lefevre James Cranstone traveled through the eastern and midwestern United States, recording scenes of everyday life throughout Virginia and present-day West Virginia, Washington, D.C., Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and New York. During his American sojourn, Cranstone produced more than 360 watercolor sketches. Here Cranstone records a scene (probably near Wheeling, Virginia, later part of West Virginia) that may have been intended as a refutation of a popular mid-nineteenth-century pro-slavery argument that African Americans were lesser beings unable to care properly for themselves. Every element in this watercolor suggests order and prosperity. The small but substantial house in the foreground is tightly weatherboarded, well-covered with a standing-seam metal roof, lit by generous amounts of (expensive) glass, and surrounded with a tightly planked, horizontally boarded fence. The standing African American woman is well-dressed, her hair neatly arranged, and her bright blue dress is covered by a spotless white apron. The house in the background, a Rhenish-American banked house, would have incorporated areas for both work and storage. Farm animals would have been housed there. The yard is fenced with a closely boarded fence, which was used to enclose poultry and small livestock such as pigs. Two purple martin boxes to the left of the house lean over a shelter for poultry. Martins were considered particularly beneficial birds on a farm because they voraciously eat insects. They also had a reputation for driving away the crows and hawks that preyed upon chickens. Because German-speaking farmers rarely owned slaves, the African American woman in the foreground probably was free.
Image rights owned by the Virginia Historical Society. |
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