Jacques-Eugène Feyen, Le baiser enfantin (“The Childlike Kiss”), 1865. Oil on canvas, 110 by 152 cm.
Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille, France
This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black Archive & Library at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research.
No more self-assured statement of middle-class domesticity could be
imagined than this charming tableau of maternity and childhood bliss set
within a peaceful, enclosed garden. Behind its facade of bourgeois
tranquillity, however, the highly accomplished painting reveals much
more about the great diversity of people living in mid-19th-century
France than the artist could have intended.
Jacques-Eugène Feyen
was a fashionable painter of picturesque views of the Brittany coast of
northern France, as well as portraits and genre scenes. At least two of
his works contain a black servant working in a white bourgeois
household. After being exhibited at the prestigious Paris Salon of 1865
and then at a regional exposition in Lille,
The Childlike Kiss was acquired by that city’s Palais des Beaux-Arts, where it hangs today.
The two women, a white mother and her black nursemaid, are seated on a
ledge backed by a trellis. In the left background appears the faint
image of a group statue of a classically robed woman and an adolescent
child, included no doubt to reinforce the primary motive of the family
group. The young mother holds up her youngest child, an infant girl, so
that she can affectionately embrace her older brother. The black woman
has swung the boy across her lap, her prominently visible left hand
holding her charge firmly around the waist.
The relationship of the two women to the children is conveyed by the
skillful use of contrasting body language. The suave form of the white
mother arches over her children in a maternal gesture both protective
and loving. The black nurse, though she smiles indulgently at the
affecting moment, leans away from the mother and her children. Her
voluminous skirt seems to spill out of the lower-right edge of the
canvas, a visual metaphor of her more tentative relationship to the
family. As will be seen, these women inhabit completely different
spheres of the same world.
The black woman’s role of caregiver to a family of privilege is
underscored by the costumes worn by both women. The mother is dressed in
an outfit typical of Alsace, a region located on either side of the
Rhine River. This rich agricultural area had long been claimed by both
France and Germany and uniquely combined the cultural ambient of both
countries. The truly defining element of her costume is the dark,
ribboned cap on her head. Its form and color are typical of the
Protestant north of Alsace, where the dark cap is traditionally worn by
married women.
Although the artist presents his subjects with great fidelity to
nature, it is the black nurse who appeals the most for her candor of
expression and dynamic posture. By comparison, the white mother and her
children fade behind their air of saccharine conventionality. Through
her candid expression, the nurse seems to reveal more of her inner
personality to the viewer. Dazzling in its colored components, her
attire consists of a few simple elements. She wears a full-length blue
dress over a white blouse edged by a crisp, narrow collar. The simple
garment is draped by a long red shawl.
The ensemble, unlike her mistress’s costume, does not seem typical of
the Alsace region. Its distinctive yet basic appearance resembles a
kind of uniform, clearly indicating her status as a domestic servant.
Her yellow head wrap and gold pendant earrings add an exotic touch to
her outfit. Along with the relatively simple lines of her dress and
shawl, these adornments also seem allusive to her life in service.
Specifically, they stress the association in France at that time of the
black nursemaid with the nation’s West Indian colonies.
On the other hand, the key to the personal identity of the smiling
black woman in Feyen’s painting is found within the Parisian art scene
itself. Sources of the time refer to her as Laura, a popular artist’s
model whose face and figure appear in several works by modernist
painters of the 1860s. Much speculation exists concerning her origin,
with most positing some connection with Africa or the Caribbean, like
that of the woman she represents in the painting.
