www.common-place.org · vol. 14 · no. 1 · Fall 2013
Cybèle T. Gontar is a PhD candidate in American art at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She has written for the Metropolitan Museum Journal, The Magazine Antiques, andCommon-place.
Cybèle T. Gontar
A Fashion for Abolition
Frédéric Etienne Joseph Feldtrappe's Traite des Nègres (ca. 1825)
Introduction
Today a gallery of the Nantes History Museum's Château des Ducs de Bretagne relates information about the transatlantic slave trade. Within stands a lit à la Duchesse, whose faded but once stylish toile ensemble reveals striking antislavery graphics (figs. 1, 2). One scene bears the title "Traite des Nègres"—Slave Trade—on a wooden sign printed in repeat across the fabric.
Toile, short for toile de Jouy (after the Oberkampf factory in Jouy-en-Josas, France), is cotton, linen, or silk printed with monochromatic scenes, often dyed in red, blue, or black. The word "toile," meaning cloth, derives from the Latin root tela, or web—an apt metaphor for the network of painters, engravers, and printmakers linked through Traite des Nègres. For example, while signed "E. Feldtrappe," Traite's scenery reflects contributions by six French and British artists inspired by the cause of abolition. Feldtrappe's cloth (circa 1825) re-disseminated imagery from late eighteenth-century abolitionist prints, underscoring their currency well into the nineteenth century as slavery persisted.
Seemingly deemphasized by their use for decorative upholstery patterns, Traite's vignettes, in fact, would have been difficult to miss, especially when draping windows or objects of repose, and hence viewed at close range. While private today, bedrooms were semi-public spaces for centuries, and bed draperies were among the most expensive and prestigious household possessions. Politically commemorative toiles were au courant material for entertainment and stimulating discussion within the personal yet open setting of the nineteenth-century bedchamber or parlor. Traite was printed to promote abolition, despite its inevitable use in households made wealthy by the trafficking it denounced.Made near Rouen, part of France's commercial slave-trading center, Traite is a symbol of the Atlantic world in which slaves labored over and were physically bartered for cotton.
This article will discuss how Traite des Nègres came to be produced, and will consider its use, meaning, and relationship to antislavery activity and related artworks. As will be shown, the cloth's scenes blend French, British, and American abolitionist expressions, characterized by Enlightenment ideals, romantic themes, and moralizing sentiment. Made near Rouen, part of France's commercial slave-trading center, Traite is a symbol of the Atlantic world in which slaves labored over and were physically bartered for cotton. Further, it is a material fragment of a vast global cloth trade—identified by Giorgio Riello as the effect of a progressive shift in the textile-manufacturing core from Asia to Europe, spurred by industrialization in France and Britain.
Traite, together with its sources, represents the interrelationship of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century textile and slave trades with colonial racial identity and experience in Europe, Africa, and America. While its use is yet undocumented in North America, surviving mulberry-on-white lengths have been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, with a saffron-colored remnant at the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum. Other samples exist in at least seven other collections outside the United States, confirming the cloth's popularity and the quantity of its manufacture. While the only known "furniture cotton" devoted to abolition motifs, Traite des Nègres is akin to other historic toiles celebrating liberty, some manufactured for a post-Revolutionary American market. For example, L'Hommage de l'Amerique à la France ("America's homage to France," produced by Oberkampf around 1780) includes a kneeling slave holding up a leaflet before an allegorical figure of France.
1. Lit à la Duchesse (cherry wood) with Traite des Nègres hangings (ca. 1825) by Frédéric Etienne Joseph Feldtrappe (French, 1786-1849), signed "E. Feldtrappe"; roller-printed cotton, probably Canteleu or Manufacture Girard à Déville-lès-Rouen (Normandy). Bed: 46.2 x 48.2 x 47 in.; canopy is suspended 8.75 ft. © Château des Ducs de Bretagne—Musée d'histoire de Nantes, photo by Alain Guillard.
2. Detail of Traite des Nègres, ca. 1825, Frédéric Etienne Joseph Feldtrappe (French, 1786-1849), mulberry-on-white roller-printed cotton signed "E. Feldtrappe," 101 x 33 inches. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund. Image source: Art Resource, New York. Click image to see full length of cloth in a new window.
Traite des Nègres
Read clockwise,Traite's four interlocking scenes begin in an Edenic Africa before the arrival of trade-seeking Europeans. Kind-hearted Africans rescue shipwrecked voyagers from drowning. Yet in the final scene, the welcomed Europeans (and a complicit African) have been transformed into brutal slave traders, one with a bludgeon and another with a branding iron at his feet. A native man is torn from his family, and another sits shackled in a rowboat. The menacing slave trader—an unlikely subject for bed linens—is included in other abolition-inspired stories and images. A figure with upraised baton is seen in Samuel Wood's 1805 broadside Injured Humanity, and in Charles-Émile Jacque's Un planteur entêté (An obstinate planter), ca. 1830, from La Caricature, a Parisian satirical magazine (figs. 3, 4). L'Histoire de Paul et Virginie, the iconic novel of 1788 by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint Pierre set on the island of Mauritius, describes a confrontation with a cruel slave master. This scene was reproduced on fashionable Paul et Virginie toiles, including one designed by Favre, Petitpierre et Cie of Nantes, ca. 1795. But how did the printing of such scenery on furnishing fabrics come about?
The seventeenth-century "calico craze" for brightly colored, painted, and printed Indian cottons, exported mainly via the British East India Company, led to competitive embargoes in France. Resulting import substitution practices were also banned until 1759. An indienne (meaning "Indian") was a French fabric designed in emulation of the restricted fabrics. They were known also as toiles peints, or "painted cottons." Though prohibited, l'indiennage continued apace in Marseilles, Rouen, Nantes, and elsewhere in France.
Cybèle T. Gontar is a PhD candidate in American art at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She has written for the Metropolitan Museum Journal, The Magazine Antiques, andCommon-place.
Cybèle T. Gontar
A Fashion for Abolition
Frédéric Etienne Joseph Feldtrappe's Traite des Nègres (ca. 1825)
Introduction
Today a gallery of the Nantes History Museum's Château des Ducs de Bretagne relates information about the transatlantic slave trade. Within stands a lit à la Duchesse, whose faded but once stylish toile ensemble reveals striking antislavery graphics (figs. 1, 2). One scene bears the title "Traite des Nègres"—Slave Trade—on a wooden sign printed in repeat across the fabric.
Toile, short for toile de Jouy (after the Oberkampf factory in Jouy-en-Josas, France), is cotton, linen, or silk printed with monochromatic scenes, often dyed in red, blue, or black. The word "toile," meaning cloth, derives from the Latin root tela, or web—an apt metaphor for the network of painters, engravers, and printmakers linked through Traite des Nègres. For example, while signed "E. Feldtrappe," Traite's scenery reflects contributions by six French and British artists inspired by the cause of abolition. Feldtrappe's cloth (circa 1825) re-disseminated imagery from late eighteenth-century abolitionist prints, underscoring their currency well into the nineteenth century as slavery persisted.
Seemingly deemphasized by their use for decorative upholstery patterns, Traite's vignettes, in fact, would have been difficult to miss, especially when draping windows or objects of repose, and hence viewed at close range. While private today, bedrooms were semi-public spaces for centuries, and bed draperies were among the most expensive and prestigious household possessions. Politically commemorative toiles were au courant material for entertainment and stimulating discussion within the personal yet open setting of the nineteenth-century bedchamber or parlor. Traite was printed to promote abolition, despite its inevitable use in households made wealthy by the trafficking it denounced.Made near Rouen, part of France's commercial slave-trading center, Traite is a symbol of the Atlantic world in which slaves labored over and were physically bartered for cotton.
This article will discuss how Traite des Nègres came to be produced, and will consider its use, meaning, and relationship to antislavery activity and related artworks. As will be shown, the cloth's scenes blend French, British, and American abolitionist expressions, characterized by Enlightenment ideals, romantic themes, and moralizing sentiment. Made near Rouen, part of France's commercial slave-trading center, Traite is a symbol of the Atlantic world in which slaves labored over and were physically bartered for cotton. Further, it is a material fragment of a vast global cloth trade—identified by Giorgio Riello as the effect of a progressive shift in the textile-manufacturing core from Asia to Europe, spurred by industrialization in France and Britain.
Traite, together with its sources, represents the interrelationship of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century textile and slave trades with colonial racial identity and experience in Europe, Africa, and America. While its use is yet undocumented in North America, surviving mulberry-on-white lengths have been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, with a saffron-colored remnant at the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum. Other samples exist in at least seven other collections outside the United States, confirming the cloth's popularity and the quantity of its manufacture. While the only known "furniture cotton" devoted to abolition motifs, Traite des Nègres is akin to other historic toiles celebrating liberty, some manufactured for a post-Revolutionary American market. For example, L'Hommage de l'Amerique à la France ("America's homage to France," produced by Oberkampf around 1780) includes a kneeling slave holding up a leaflet before an allegorical figure of France.
1. Lit à la Duchesse (cherry wood) with Traite des Nègres hangings (ca. 1825) by Frédéric Etienne Joseph Feldtrappe (French, 1786-1849), signed "E. Feldtrappe"; roller-printed cotton, probably Canteleu or Manufacture Girard à Déville-lès-Rouen (Normandy). Bed: 46.2 x 48.2 x 47 in.; canopy is suspended 8.75 ft. © Château des Ducs de Bretagne—Musée d'histoire de Nantes, photo by Alain Guillard.
Traite des Nègres
Read clockwise,Traite's four interlocking scenes begin in an Edenic Africa before the arrival of trade-seeking Europeans. Kind-hearted Africans rescue shipwrecked voyagers from drowning. Yet in the final scene, the welcomed Europeans (and a complicit African) have been transformed into brutal slave traders, one with a bludgeon and another with a branding iron at his feet. A native man is torn from his family, and another sits shackled in a rowboat. The menacing slave trader—an unlikely subject for bed linens—is included in other abolition-inspired stories and images. A figure with upraised baton is seen in Samuel Wood's 1805 broadside Injured Humanity, and in Charles-Émile Jacque's Un planteur entêté (An obstinate planter), ca. 1830, from La Caricature, a Parisian satirical magazine (figs. 3, 4). L'Histoire de Paul et Virginie, the iconic novel of 1788 by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint Pierre set on the island of Mauritius, describes a confrontation with a cruel slave master. This scene was reproduced on fashionable Paul et Virginie toiles, including one designed by Favre, Petitpierre et Cie of Nantes, ca. 1795. But how did the printing of such scenery on furnishing fabrics come about?
The seventeenth-century "calico craze" for brightly colored, painted, and printed Indian cottons, exported mainly via the British East India Company, led to competitive embargoes in France. Resulting import substitution practices were also banned until 1759. An indienne (meaning "Indian") was a French fabric designed in emulation of the restricted fabrics. They were known also as toiles peints, or "painted cottons." Though prohibited, l'indiennage continued apace in Marseilles, Rouen, Nantes, and elsewhere in France.
