Black People in European Sculpture Project

77 (21/01/2022)

Octoroon

Full length nude female figure standing beside a support draped with fabric and flowers. Her head is bent to the side looking downwards while she uses her right hand to modestly position her long, wavy hair over her front torso. She is depicted with her hands manacled at the wrist with a chain connecting them.

Statue: Full-length figure (single)

Base present - appears to be the original base

Height: 170 cm

Width: 55 cm

Depth: 45 cm

Marble – white

Carving

Monochrome – white

Front base: 'THE OCTOROON'

Left hand rear side: 'Bell Sc'

Anonymous: generic/idealised type

Long Hair

Manacle with chain from wrist to wrist

Column to left of figure depicting draped fabric with flower wreath on top

Main protagonist

Female

Adult

Enslaved

Naked

Manacles with/without chains

None

Being subjugated

Standing

Sad/tearful/mournful

Looking downwards

Looking sideways

Unfocussed/blank eyeballs

Other

Nineteenth century (1800-1899)

1868

Recorded in related documentation

1874: purchased from artist for £150 (£18,048 in 2021)

Didactic / Propagandistic

Decorative

Secular Civic: other

BLKMG.1876.36

1875: purchased from the artist by public subscription and presented to the Blackburn Free Library and Museum Committee (now Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery).

1874: Lent to Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery by the artist in 1874

1868: Exhibited at the Royal Academy

The sculptural context for this work is meant to be a slave auction. John Bell used the mid-nineteenth century play, "The Octoroon," by Dion Boucicault as inspiration for this sculpture. The title is a derogatory term referring to the main character's ancestry; one of her great-grandparents was Black. The drama depicted the harsh realities of enslavement for those of mixed racial heritage, particularly women, in the American South before emancipation.

The Blackburn Museum and Art UK records the date given for Octoroon as 1868, in line with the Royal Academy exhibition – this is in dispute with A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain by Ingrid Roscoe, 2009 in which the date is recorded as 1854 with references of Graves I, 1905-1906 and Barnes 1999.