The Old Plantation
The Old Plantation adalah sebuah lukisan cat air seni rakyat Amerika yang kemungkinan dilukis pada akhir abad ke-18 di sebuah perkebunan di Carolina Selatan.[3][4][5] Dikenal karena waktu pembuatannya, kredibilitasnya, penggambaran non-stereotif dari para budak di daratan utama Amerika Utara, dan fakta bahwa para budak ditampilkan mengejar ketertarikan mereka masing-masing. Pada 2010, petugas perpustakaan Colonial Williamsburg Susan P. Shames berhasil mengidentifikasi sang seniman yaitu pemilik budak asal Carolina Selatan bernama John Rose, dan lukisan ini mungkin menggambarkan perkebunannya yang kini menjadi Beaufort County.
The Old Plantation | |
---|---|
Seniman | Didedikasikan kepada John Rose |
Tahun | kira-kira 1785–1795[1] |
Tipe | Cat air pada laid paper[2] |
Ukuran | 29.7 cm × 45.4 cm (11 11⁄16 in × 17 ⅞ in) |
Lokasi | Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum[1], Williamsburg, Virginia |
Deskripsi dan interpretasi
Lukisan ini menggambarkan perbudakan warga Afrika-Amerika diantara dua bangunan terluar dari perkebunan pada sebuah aliran sungai yang luas.[6] Dikenal sebagai satu-satunya lukisan pada masanya yang menggambarkan Afrika-Amerika sebagai diri mereka sendiri, yang saling terpengaruh,[7] meskipun kegiatan utamanya masih tidak jelas. Beberapa penulis menduga bahwa lukisan ini menggambarkan upacara pernikahan, dengan tradisi "meloncati sapu". Namun, cendekiawan menduga bahwa para subyek mementaskan sebuah dansa sekuler: dansa bagian barat Afrika memiliki pola tradisional termasuk tongkat dan variasi dari posisi tubuh. Hiasan kepala yang digambarkan pada lukisan berasal dari Afrika Barat.[8]
Lukisan ini menampilkan dua musisi pria, salah satunya memainkan versi awal dari banjo. Ini merupakan lukisan paling awal yang menampilkan sebuah banjo.[9] Musisi kedua memainkan sebuah instrumen perkusi yang menyerupai sebuah Yoruba gudugudu.[5][10] Dua wanita memegang sebuah benda yang kelihatannya menyerupai syal, namun aslinya adalah sheguras, kerincingan yang dibuat dari labu yang dibungkus dalam sebuah jaring dengan panjang yang bervariasi ke obyek keras yang ditenun.[11]
Seniman dan asal
Berdekade lamanya, identitas dari senimannya tidak diketahui, demikian halnya dengan asal lukisan ini sebelum 1935, ketika dibeli oleh Holger Cahill dari Mary E. Lyles dari Columbia, Carolina Selatan.[12] Namun, pada 2010, Susan P. Shames, seorang petugas perpustakaan di Colonial Williamsburg, mempublikasikan sebuah buku berjudul The Old Plantation: The Artist Revealed diamana dia in which she argues that the artist was the South Carolina plantation owner John Rose.[13] Shames further suggests that the image depicts slaves on Rose's plantation in what is now Beaufort County, South Carolina, or one nearby.[14]
In 1775, Rose was named Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas in Beaufort District, an appointment implying his educated status and familiarity with governing officials.[13] By 1795, he owned a lot in the town of Beaufort, as well as a rural, 813-acre tract on the Coosaw River in Prince William Parish.[15] He employed slave labor to farm the latter property. At least 50 of these slaves have been identified by name, and he probably owned others.[16] Shames suggests that the slaves and plantation depicted in the image were Rose's own. However, the broad river in the middle ground raises questions about whether Rose owned property on both sides of this natural boundary and, thus, whether he depicted his own dwelling and outbuildings in the background, or a neighbor's.[17] Rose moved to the Dorchester area in present-day Colleton County in 1795, and he died in 1820 in Charleston after a fall from a horse.[18]
In his will, Rose left his watercolor of dancing slaves to his son-in-law, Thomas Davis Stall (1770–1848).[19] According to Shames, it remained in the family for more than a hundred years, until it was finally sold at an auction of the estate of Rose Rowan Ellis Copes (1846–1927) of Orangeburg, South Carolina, probably in 1928 or 1929.[20] It was bought either by an unidentified interim dealer or by Mary Earle Lyles (b. 1878) of Columbia. It was certainly in Lyles' possession by 1935, when it was purchased by Holger Cahill, acting as agent for Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. According to Lyles, however, it was painted on a plantation between Charleston and Orangeburg.[21] A watermark on the paper has been identified as that used by the English papermaker James Whatman II (1741–1798) between 1777 and 1794.[17]
Rockefeller and Cahill transferred the painting to Williamsburg, Virginia, to be part of the Rockefeller collection at the Ludwell-Paradise House.[12] It was later given to Colonial Williamsburg.[21] The painting is currently[per kapan?] held by the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum in Williamsburg.[3]
Referensi
- ^ a b Colonial Williamsburg EMuseum
- ^ Mazow 2005, hlm. 108.
- ^ a b Foster 1997, hlm. 314.
- ^ Epstein 1975, hlm. 354.
- ^ a b Epstein 1975, hlm. 351.
- ^ Shames 2010, hlm. 8
- ^ Bontemps 2001, hlm. 7.
- ^ Shames 2010, hlm. 11–12
- ^ Mazow 2005, hlm. 23.
- ^ Epstein 1963, hlm. 202.
- ^ Shames 2010, hlm. 12
- ^ a b Stillinger 2002, hlm. 56
- ^ a b Shames 2010, hlm. 33
- ^ Shames 2010, hlm. 55
- ^ Shames 2010, hlm. 36
- ^ Shames 2010, hlm. 56–60
- ^ a b Shames 2010, hlm. 26
- ^ Shames 2010, hlm. 44
- ^ Shames 2010, hlm. 52
- ^ Shames 2010, hlm. 23–32
- ^ a b Shames 2010, hlm. 21
Works cited
- Colonial Williamsburg, "Old Plantation", EMuseum Online Catalog.
- Bontemps, Alex (2001), The Punished Self: Surviving Slavery in the Colonial South, Cornell University Press, ISBN 0-8014-3521-8.
- Epstein, Dena J. (Spring 1963), "Slave Music in the United States before 1860: A Survey of Sources (Part I)", Notes, 2nd series, Music Library Association, 20 (2), hlm. 195–212, doi:10.2307/894726, JSTOR 894726
- Epstein, Dena J. (September 1975), "The Folk Banjo: A Documentary History", Ethnomusicology, Society for Ethnomusicology, 19 (3), hlm. 347–371, doi:10.2307/850790, JSTOR 850790
- Foster, Helen Bradley (1997), New Raiments of Self: African American Clothing in the Antebellum South, Berg Publishers, ISBN 1-85973-189-9.
- Mazow, Leo G. (2005), Picturing the Banjo, Penn State Press, ISBN 0-271-02710-X.
- Shames, Susan P. (2010), The Old Plantation: The Artist Revealed, Colonial Williamsburg, ISBN 978-0-87935-243-1.
- Stillinger, Elizabeth (2002), "From Attics, Sheds, and Secondhand Shops: Collecting Folk Art in America, 1880–1940", dalam Clayton, Virginia Tuttle, Drawing on America's Past: Folk Art, Modernism, and the Index of American Design, University of North Carolina Press, hlm. 45–60, ISBN 0-89468-295-4, diakses tanggal June 17, 2011