mariaslozak:The Creole Women (Les femmes créoles) by Joseph Savart (1735-1801). Pastel, signe
mariaslozak:The Creole Women (Les femmes créoles) by Joseph Savart (1735-1801). Pastel, signed and dated 17 October 1770 in Guadeloupe.“Three of them are accessorised with attributes of their trade: a servant holding a plate of meat, a seamstress or haberdasher with squares of cloth and a ruler, and an itinerant vendor carrying a tray of pastries on her head. […]The artist attaches particular importance to the rendering of their clothes, which are consistent with contemporary travellers’ descriptions of ‘mulatresses’, remarkably elegant free women of colour. The most characteristic element of their dress is the bamboche, a tall headdress created by stacking handkerchiefs on top of each other, attached by pins. The headdresses formed part of the social markers of colonial society: the taller they were and the more sophisticated the fabrics used, the higher the social rank claimed by the wearer.The use of this style by the ‘mulatresses’ was not a mere matter of vanity. It is indicative of the violence within the slave society, which rested on a model of binary social constructs: Whites = masters, Blacks = slaves. The introduction of emancipation created a third type, but it relied on strong racial segregation meant to preserve the power of the very small White majority (thirteen per cent of the total population). Clothing and adornment were thus used by women of colour to assimilate with white society even as colonial authorities reacted by producing sumptuary laws that prohibited them from wearing certain fabrics - notably, lace and silk - and gold jewellery.”The dress and jewellery of the women in the painting “contravene these laws and thus subtly challenge the social order. Even more surprisingly, it is the figure on the left, with the darkest skin, who is most richly attired with her exquisite lace costume, her two-rowed, beaded gold necklace, and gold ear drops. Paradoxically, her sophistication and that of her companions seems contradicted by their display of attributes associated with small trades, evoking more modest conditions.”However, the painting coincides with the point in history when “colour-based discrimination was most deeply entrenched in the law” and the rejection by the Enlightenment philosphers of existing ideological foundations “paved the way for the revolutionary legislation that would abolish slavery and segregation. It is in this context that Savart drew these four Creole women, represented as equal to Whites”, “dignified and free, aware of their differences and at the same time united as sisters. They also celebrate the success of an emerging social class, that of free tradespeople of colour who have managed to fit themselves into the economic fabric of the colonies. Behind this pleasant genre scene it is therefore possible to detect the expression of a Republican manifesto for the unification of people of colour and the egality of all peoples.”What gives additional weight to this interpretation, the article writers conclude, is the fact that in 1792 the artist left Martinique, then occupied by the English, and together with his sons and a contingent of 300 others moved to neighbouring Dominica, where he voted in the first election with universal male suffrage held in the history of France. -- source link