2021.6
Traité De Nêgres
Artists
La Citoyenne Rollet
(active in the late 18th century – );
[
after
John Raphael Smith];
[
after
George Morland]
Title
Traité De Nêgres
Creation Date
ca. 1794-1795
Century
late 18th century
Dimensions
18 3/4 x 15 3/4 in. (47.63 x 40.01 cm)
Object Type
print
Creation Place
Europe, France
Medium and Support
engraved on print
Credit Line
Museum Purchase, The Philip Conway Beam Endowment Fund
Copyright
This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s
Copyright Terms and Conditions.
Accession Number
2021.6
A female printmaker known as La Citoyenne (Citizen) Rollet crafted this engraving after another engraved reproduction of George Morland’s oil painting The Execrable Human Traffic (1788). The image highlights the cruelty of a father being abducted by enslavers in front of his wife and child, an imagined episode set on the coast of West Africa. The separation of families figured into slave narratives and abolitionist literature during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and provides the main plot threads of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Rollet added a caption to adapt Morland’s messa ge to the cause of the French Revolution: “What an infamous contract. One bargains for that which belongs to no one, the other sells the property of Nature. This vile occupation was abolished by the National Convention on the 16th Pluviôse in the Second Year [February 4, 1794] of the one and indivisible French Republic.”
Object Description
Per the on-line catalogue:
La Citoyenne Rollet was a French female printmaker who was active in the late 18th century. The engraving, after George Morland's 1788 painting "The Execreble Human Traffic," features an African family in a coastal setting being brutally separated by European slave traders. Text below the engraving reads (translated from the French): "What an infamous contract. One bargains for a person who belongs to no one, the other sells what belongs to nature. This vile trade was abolished by the National Convention on the 16th Pluviose of the 2nd year of a united and indivisible French Republic."
