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Portrait of a Creole Woman with Madras Tignon
Portrait of Marie Laveau (historically)
Artist
Year c. 1837
Medium oil on canvas
SubjectUnknown Creole woman
Dimensions53 cm × 60 cm (21 in × 23.5 in)
Location Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, U.S.
OwnerVirginia Museum of Fine Arts

Portrait of a Creole Woman with Madras Tignon ( c. 1837) is an oil painting traditionally attributed to George Catlin. It is best known from a c. 1915 copy made by Frank Schneider, an art restorer working for the Louisiana State Museum. The portrait was historically known as Portrait of Marie Laveau as it was presumed to depict Louisiana Voodoo priestess Marie Laveau. Long thought to be lost, the painting resurfaced in 2022 when it was sold at auction for US$984,000.

The three-quarter painting shows an unknown free Creole of color woman wearing a multicolor tignon and a red shawl. It includes a signature at the upper right "G. Catlin Nlle Orléans / mai 1837". [1] Despite the sitter being identified as Laveau, and Catlin having spent time in New Orleans during her lifetime, [2] there are no records of him having met or painted her. [3]

History

The earliest records for the painting come from 1912 when the Board of Curators of the Louisiana State Museum reported on artwork loaned to the museum for exhibition at the Cabildo. Among the items loaned by New Orleans entrepreneur and collector Gaspar Cusachs, who contributed a number of paintings, artifacts, and curios to the new museum, was an oil painting recorded as "Portrait, Marie Laveau, by C. Catlin, 1833, 18×25" [ sic]. [4]

In 1922, Maison Blanche co-owner Simon J. Shwartz acquired the painting, [5] displaying it in a small gallery on the department store's fourth floor as "Marie Laveau by Catlin" until he sold the painting to Louisiana Historical Society president Edward Alexander Parsons in 1933. [6] [7] Parsons returned the painting to the Louisiana State Museum, [8] [9] but the identification of the portrait was less certain. The 1934 guide book for the museum identified the painting as "Marie Laveau or Choctaw Woman," and by 1941 the attribution to Catlin was also in dispute. [10] [11]

By 1947, the painting was no longer on display at the Cabildo, having been reclaimed by Parsons [6] and eventually presumed lost until it appeared in May 2022 at Brunk Auctions in Asheville, North Carolina. [1] Listed with an expected sale price of $200,000–300,000, the painting was purchased by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia for $984,000. [12]

Attribution

A report on the painting commissioned by the auction house investigated the history of the painting, but found no mention of the work in Catlin's records. In addition, the researcher noted that the painting and signature were both inconsistent with Catlin's style. [3] While Catlin did travel along the Mississippi in the 1830s, his travel accounts do not directly mention Marie Laveau nor his painting any free women of color in New Orleans. [13] Susan Rawles, an associate curator at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, noted that the portrait is reflective of French academic styles, and pointed to research indicating it should be attributed to Jacques Amans due to consistencies with his style, as well as the technique and materials he was known to use. [3] [14]

As for the painting's subject, the auction house's report noted that multiple portraits of unidentified Creole women wearing a tignon have been labeled as portraits of Marie Laveau. [3] [6] For example, François Fleischbein's Portrait of a Free Woman of Color ( c. 1837) and Adolph Rinck's Free Woman of Color, New Orleans (1844) have both been identified as portraits of Marie Laveau at different points in time. [15] [16] [17] According to her daughter, however, Laveau's image was never recorded during her lifetime. Responding to George Washington Cable's "Creole Slave Songs" article from The Century Magazine, which included an illustration of Laveau and her daughter Marie Philomène Glapion Legendre by E. W. Kemble, [18] Legendre told a reporter from The Daily Picayune that Laveau "never had any [photograph] taken nor ever been sketched." [19]

Schneider copy

Copy painted c. 1915 by Frank Schneider

Sometime around 1915, while the original painting was on loan to the Louisiana State Museum, museum employee Frank Schneider (1881–1935) painted a copy of it. [3] Schneider joined the staff of the Louisiana State Museum as curator of the art collection (as well as the museum's taxidermist) around 1914 and he restored and copied a number of paintings loaned to the museum. [20]

Once the original was no longer available, Schneider's copy, identified as "Portrait of Marie Laveau" continued to be displayed in the museum. [3] In 1988, when a fire swept through the Cabildo, the painting suffered some damage that required restoration work. [3] [21]

With the original painting lost for over 80 years, Schneider's copy became one of the most widely known paintings allegedly depicting Marie Laveau; [6] [22] folklorist Zora Neale Hurston specifically mentions the portrait in her 1931 essay "Hoodoo in America". [23] The Schneider copy has been used as the inspiration for some modern reimaginations of Marie Laveau. [24] [25] [26]

References

  1. ^ a b "Lot 883: Rare Early Creole Portrait". Asheville, North Carolina: Brunk Auctions. 2022. Archived from the original on November 29, 2022. Retrieved August 3, 2023.
  2. ^ "George Catlin Artist Timeline". Richmond, Virginia: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. January 21, 2015. p. VMFA Educational Resources. Retrieved August 6, 2023.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g MacCash, Doug (May 24, 2022). "Famous portrait of someone who is not Marie Laveau sells for almost $1 million". The Times-Picayune. New Orleans, Louisiana. Archived from the original on June 29, 2023. Retrieved August 3, 2023.
  4. ^ Third Biennial Report of the Board of Curators of the Louisiana State Museum to His Excellency, the Governor and General Assembly of the State of Louisiana: April 1st, 1910–March 31st, 1912. New Orleans, Louisiana: Louisiana State Museum. 1912. p. 63. Archived from the original on August 4, 2023. Retrieved August 4, 2023 – via Google Books. Portrait can be seen as installed in upper left of Plate v "Gaspar Cusachs Historical Collection" (between pages 32 and 33).
  5. ^ Biennial Report of the Board of Curators for 1922–23. New Orleans, Louisiana: Louisiana State Museum. September 6, 2023. p. 22 – via Google Books.
  6. ^ a b c d Long, Carolyn Morrow (2006). A New Orleans Voudou Priestess: The Legend and Reality of Marie Laveau. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida. p. 57. ISBN  978-0-8130-2974-0.
  7. ^ Pollack, Deborah C. (2015). Visual Art and the Urban Evolution of the New South. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press. p. 149. ISBN  978-1611174328 – via Google Books.
  8. ^ "Gallery Buys Painting of Old Voodoo Queen". The Indianapolis Times. Vol. 45, no. 109. United Press. September 15, 1933. p. 25. Archived from the original on August 4, 2023. Retrieved August 4, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. ^ "Art: Remembered Queen". Time. Vol. 22, no. 10. September 4, 1933. Retrieved August 4, 2023.
  10. ^ Pollack (2015), p. 150.
  11. ^ Writer's Program of the Work Projects Administration (1945) [1941]. Louisiana: A Guide to the State (Third Printing). New York, New York: Hastings House. p. 163. ISBN  9781603540179. Archived from the original on August 4, 2023. Retrieved August 4, 2023 – via Google Books. A painting, signed by Catlin and said to be of Marie Laveau, the voodoo queen, is extant. Both the signature and the identity of the sitter, however, have been questioned. In this connection it is amusing to note that at least four different portraits, which do not in the least resemble each other, have been claimed as likenesses of Marie; and it has become something of a joke in New Orleans that the owner of any unidentified portrait of a woman of color with her head wrapped in a tignon will almost invariably put forth a similar claim.
  12. ^ Morgan, Dasha (June 30, 2022). "Fine Art and Antiques Bring Handsome Prices at Brunk Auctions". Tribune Papers. Asheville, North Carolina. Archived from the original on August 4, 2023. Retrieved August 3, 2023.
  13. ^ Laughlin, Eleanor A. (2023). "The Many Faces of Marie Laveau and Voudou in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans". In Hebblethwaite, Benjamin; Jansen, Silke (eds.). Indigenous and African Diaspora Religions in the United States. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. p. 85. ISBN  9781496236470 – via Google Books.
  14. ^ Hickman Ring, Madelia (May 31, 2022). "Voodoo Priestess Portrait Adds Magic To Brunk Auction". Antiques and the Arts Weekly. Retrieved August 13, 2023.
  15. ^ Reid Cleaver, Molly (June 17, 2022). "Identity theft: A rare painting damaged, a story half-told, and a reckoning about bias in art stewardship". THNOC Quarterly. New Orleans, Louisiana: The Historic New Orleans Collection. Archived from the original on August 4, 2023. Retrieved August 3, 2023.
  16. ^ Miller, Robin (April 9, 2016). "West Baton Rouge exhibit paints picture of state's wealth, impact in 1800s". The Advocate. Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Archived from the original on August 4, 2023. Retrieved August 3, 2023.
  17. ^ "Object Record: Woman in Tignon". Hillard Art Museum. Lafayette, Louisiana. Archived from the original on May 27, 2021. Retrieved August 3, 2023.
  18. ^ Cable, George Washington (April 1886). "Creole Slave Songs". The Century Magazine. Vol. 31, no. 6. p. 819 ( illustration of Laveau) – via HathiTrust.
  19. ^ "Flagitious Fiction. Cable's Romance about Marie Laveau and the Voudous". The Daily Picayune. Vol. 50, no. 77. New Orleans, Louisiana. April 11, 1886. p. 3. Archived from the original on August 4, 2023. Retrieved August 4, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  20. ^ Fourth Biennial Report of the Board of Curators: April 1st, 1912, to March 31st, 1914. New Orleans, Louisiana: Louisiana State Museum. 1914. pp. 50, 89. Archived from the original on August 4, 2023. Retrieved August 4, 2023 – via Google Books.
  21. ^ "Fire Damages New Orleans' Famed Cabildo". Los Angeles Times. United Press International. May 12, 1998. Archived from the original on August 4, 2023. Retrieved August 3, 2023.
  22. ^ Alvarado, Denise (2020). The Magic of Marie Laveau. Newburyport, Massachusetts: Weiser Books. p. xiv. ISBN  978-1-57863-673-0. Archived from the original on August 4, 2023. Retrieved August 4, 2023 – via Google Books.
  23. ^ Hurston, Zora Neale (1931). "Hoodoo in America". The Journal of American Folk-Lore. 44 (174): 326. doi: 10.2307/535394. JSTOR  535394. An oil painting of her [Laveau] hangs in the Cabildo, the Museum of the State of Louisiana, and her fame extends far beyond the borders of hoodoo.
  24. ^ MacCash, Doug (July 1, 2021). "New Orleans' own Andrew LaMar Hopkins makes a big splash on the New York art scene". The Times-Picayune. New Orleans, Louisiana. Archived from the original on March 22, 2023. Retrieved August 3, 2023.
  25. ^ "Creole New Orleans, Honey! The Art of Andrew LaMar Hopkins: Image Highlights" (PDF) (Press release). New Orleans, Louisiana: Louisiana State Museum. Archived (PDF) from the original on August 4, 2023. Retrieved August 4, 2023.
  26. ^ "'Hall of Roses' Mural Unveiling this Halloween at House of Blues Houston". Heather L. Johnson. October 26, 2018. Retrieved August 14, 2023.

External links

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