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Creator:
Bartholomew Dandridge, baptized 1691–died in or after 1754
Title:
A Young Girl with an Enslaved Servant and a Dog
Former Title(s):
A Young Girl with a Dog and a Page [1985, Cormack, YCBA Concise Catalogue]
Date:
ca. 1725
Materials & Techniques:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
48 x 48 inches (121.9 x 121.9 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:

Signed in lower right: "B. Dandridge Pix [?it]"

Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1981.25.205
Classification:
Paintings
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Link to Frame:
B1981.25.205FR
Subject Terms:
amphora | basket | blue | child | dog (animal) | enslaved person | fruit | girl | grapes | hat | lace | peaches | portrait | sculpture | slave
Access:
Not on view
Link:
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:715
Export:
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In this portrait, a young girl stands in a lace-trimmed dress, accompanied by a dog and an enslaved servant, who hands her a basket of fruit. The servant and dog both wear metal collars, marking them as property. Bartholomew Dandridge’s painting gives especially clear expression to the way that many eighteenth-century portraits constructed their white sitters’ identities in relation to perceived “others,” including non-Europeans and animals. The relief on the urn, which shows a group of cherubs taming a wild goat— an allegory of lust—serves as a contrast to the ostensibly chaste, “domesticated” love, which the young girl is shown to inspire in her two attendants. In fact, the possibility of sexual contact between white mistresses and black servants or slaves was a source of anxiety during the period.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016


In a private garden, a young girl stands in a lace-trimmed dress, accompanied by a dog and an enslaved servant, who hands her a basket overflowing with peaches and freshly picked grapes. The servant and dog both wear metal collars that mark them as property. The dog’s collar is inscribed with what may be a name, possibly referring to the girl’s father; as a young woman, she could not own property. In this portrait, Dandridge signals the girl’s virtues in several ways. The servant and dog gaze up at her, while she looks out at the viewer, establishing her central role and position of power in this scene. Dandridge’s painting gives especially clear expression to the way that many eighteenth-century portraits constructed their white sitters’ identities in relation to perceived “others,” including non-Europeans and animals. (A commonly held view in this period was that white Europeans occupied the highest point in a hierarchy of being in which black Africans ranked lower, and animals lower still.) The relief on the urn, which shows a group of cherubs taming a wild goat—an allegory of carnal lust—serves as a contrast to the ostensibly chaste, “domesticated” love, which the young girl is shown to inspire in her two attendants. In fact, the possibility of sexual contact between white mistresses and black servants or slaves was a source of anxiety—and, as we will see in the next section, satirical comment—in this period. Gallery label for Figures of Empire: Slavery and Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain (Yale Center for British Art, 2014-10-02 - 2014-12-14)

Figures of Empire: Slavery and Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain (Yale Center for British Art, 2014-10-02 - 2014-12-14) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

David Bindman, The Image of the Black in Western Art : From the " Age of Discovery" to the Age of Abolition, , vol. 3, part 3, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2010, pp. 164, 165, fig. 159, N8217.B535 I42 2010+ (YCBA) Citations are to Vol. 3, Part 3 [YCBA]

Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 80-81, N590.2 .A83 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Deborah Cullen, Caribbean : Art at the Crossroads of the World, , El Museo del Barrio, New York, 2012, p. 40, N6591 .C375 2012 + OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Martina Droth, Britain in the world : Highlights from the Yale Center for British Art in honor of Amy Meyers, Yale University Press, New Haven, London, 2019, pp. 32-33, 34 (detail), N6761 .Y33 2019 (LC) (YCBA) [YCBA]

Figures of Empire : Slavery and Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2014, pp. 9, 41, chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://britishart.yale.edu/sites/default/files/inline/Figures%20of%20Empire_booklet_FINAL.pdf [YCBA]

Figures of Empire : Slavery and Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2014, pp. 9, 41, V 2556 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Titus Kaphar, Commentary on Charles Stanhope, Third Earl of Harrington, by Joshua Reynolds, [ Website ] , Yale Center for British Art, Accessed 11/24/2015, comments start at 22:08, http://interactive.britishart.yale.edu/slavery-and-portraiture/325/commentary-by-titus-kaphar [Website]

Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Body and embodiment in Netherlandish art = Lichaam en lichamelijkheid in de Nederlandse kunst, Zwolle, NL, pp. 86-109, N95.9 .N43 58 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Slavery and Portraiture in 18th-century Atlantic Britain, [Website] , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2015, https://interactive.britishart.yale.edu/slavery-and-portraiture/ [Website]

James Christen Steward, The New Child : British Art and the Origins of Modern Childhood, 1730-1830, , University Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, 1995, p. 85, fig. 5, N6766 S78 1995 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

The Strasbourg manuscript: a medieval painters' handbook; translated from the old German by Viola & Rosamund Borradaile; editors' text translated into German by Johanna M. Franck, foreword by John Marthan., Tiranti, London, pp. 54-58, ND1130 S813 1966 (YCBA) [YCBA]


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