Black Woman with Child

Black Woman with Child is a circa 1650 full-length portrait painting by Albert Eckhout. It is in the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark.

Black Woman wih Child
Year1650
Dimensions267 cm (105 in) × 178 cm (70 in)
Accession No.N.38.a8 
IdentifiersRKDimages ID: 113896

The sitters are unidentified, since the purpose of the painting was not to convey the character of a specific woman with her child, but rather to describe an ethnic New World type.[1] The painting featured as the cover of the book Albert Eckhout, Court Painter in Colonial Dutch Brazil in 2006, and then it appeared in the 2008 exhibition in Amsterdam called Black is beautiful: Rubens tot Dumas.[2] Eckhout was one of six scientific artists invited by John Maurice, Prince of Nassau-Siegen to go to Brazil to document life there. Of the others, only Frans Post and Georg Marcgraf are known today. The doctor Willem Piso, who was on the expedition team as a naturalist, later together with Marcgraf wrote and published the book Historia Naturalis Brasiliae in 1648.

The woman holds tropical Brazilian fruits, carrying them in a basket of African Bakongo weave.[3] She wears an African Bakongo hat, but wears European jewelry and carries a European pipe in her sash.[3] She rests her hand on the head of her son, who has a lighter skin color, which was to illustrate the fact that skin color can change and become darker with age.[3] The landscape behind her is probably the port of Mauritstad (today's Recife).[4] The pose with a tree is based on the ethnographical prints in the standard work on Guinea by Pieter de Marees.[3]

The painting is one of 24 paintings given by Johan Maurits van Nassau Siegen to King Frederick III of Denmark in 1678. This painting, along with its pendant, were copied multiple times.

References
  1. Visions of Savage Paradise: Albert Eckhout, Court Painter in Colonial Dutch Brazil, by Rebecca Parker Brienen, 2006 ISBN 9789053569474
  2. 2018 blogpost by exhibition curator Esther Schreuder about this painting and the work done by Albert Eckhout for John Maurice, Prince of Nassau-Siegen.
  3. Black is beautiful: Rubens tot Dumas, catalog nr. 47, exhibition & catalog in Nieuwe Kerk Amsterdam, 2008
  4. Albert Eckhout, Series of eight figures, by Dr. Rachel Zimmerman, Khan Academy
  • Black is beautiful: Rubens tot Dumas, cat. nr. 47, exhibition & catalog in Nieuwe Kerk Amsterdam, 2008
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