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Your wooly [sic] hair, I do declare ...
Publisher: Strong, Thomas W.
A hand-coloured lithograph on 4to-size, very thin white wove paper. An ornate, oval-shaped baroque-style strapwork/scrollwork border printed in blue ink with entwining vine with grapes, leaves, flowers featuring Cupid and Hebe. A heart pierced with an arrow at lower centre. Within the border, a lithograph printed in black ink with some hand colouring, a caricatured image of a broad-bodied black woman in a rural setting wearing a white apron with a low-cut blouse, string of pearls and large hoop earrings and holding a letter in her right hand. A verse printed below: 'Your wooly [sic] hair I do declare / Appears to me divine / Then stray no more sweet Blackamoor / But be my Valentine'. The interior is blank. Front adhered to the back at upper right. One of four examples from the same series with blue lithographed ornate borders which are mounted together, consecutively in album P.14416-R. See also P.14416-R-13, P.14416-R-14 and P.14416-R-15. A hand-written inscription on the album leaf below: '2 for 7/= [7 shillings]'. This presumably records a price from the verso which was visible prior to mounting. However, this pricing could also have been found on the handwritten MS from second-hand bookseller, R.S. Frampton found on the back fly-leaf of album P.14416-R. See P.14416-R-L1. P.14416-R-12 is not listed (and may either have already been owned by Glaisher or bought at a later date), but two of the four examples from this series are listed with the pricing of 'the 2 for 7/='. See P.14416-R-13 and P.14416-R-14.
Bequeathed by Dr J. W. L. Glaisher, 1928
Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (1928) by Glaisher, J. W. L., Dr
19th Century
Circa
1842
-
Circa
1870
The characterisation seems to simultaneously reference the stereotype of the 'Jezebel' - a sexually voracious, promiscuous black woman as counterimage of the demure Victorian lady (hooped earrings, pearls and low-cut blouse) and the stereotype of the 'mammy', the larger-sized African-American domestic servant, dressed always in a white apron, who served as a nursemaid to white children. The verse is part of a ballad found in Valentine writers of the period, titled variously 'To a Blackamoor' (or in American valentine publisher, Thomas W. Strong's 'Comic Valentine Writer', to 'a black'). See also P.14416-R-19, where the first part of the same verse is ascribed to a caricature of a black man.
Accession number: P.14416-R-12
Primary reference Number: 215157
Stable URI
Owner or interested party:
The Fitzwilliam Museum
Associated department:
Paintings, Drawings and Prints
This record can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:
The Fitzwilliam Museum (2024) "Your wooly [sic] hair, I do declare ..." Web page available at: https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/215157 Accessed: 2024-11-20 05:41:09
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{{cite web|url=https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/215157
|title=Your wooly [sic] hair, I do declare ...
|author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-11-20 05:41:09|publisher=The
University of Cambridge}}
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<figcaption class="figure-caption text-info">Your wooly [sic] hair, I do declare ...</figcaption>
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