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Your wooly [sic] hair, I do declare ...: P.14416-R-12

An image of Valentine card

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Object information

Current Location: In storage

Titles

Your wooly [sic] hair, I do declare ...

Maker(s)

Publisher: Strong, Thomas W.

Entities

Categories

Description

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.

Legal notes

Bequeathed by Dr J. W. L. Glaisher, 1928

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (1928) by Glaisher, J. W. L., Dr

Dating

19th Century
Circa 1842 - Circa 1870

Note

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.

School or Style

British

Techniques used in production

Hand colouring
Lithography

Identification numbers

Accession number: P.14416-R-12
Primary reference Number: 215157
Stable URI

Audit data

Created: Tuesday 14 February 2017 Updated: Tuesday 7 June 2022 Last processed: Friday 8 December 2023

Associated departments & institutions

Owner or interested party: The Fitzwilliam Museum
Associated department: Paintings, Drawings and Prints

Citation for print

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: 2024-03-28 09:37:54

Citation for Wikipedia

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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=2024-03-28 09:37:54|publisher=The University of Cambridge}}

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        class="img-fluid" />
        <figcaption class="figure-caption text-info">Your wooly [sic] hair, I do declare ...</figcaption>
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