IMAGES OF SLAVERY: George Fuller's Depictions of the Antebellum South SarahBums Fig. 1. George Fuller. NEGROSWAITING AT THE DEPOT. Late December, 1857. Pencil on paper. This drawing and all others in this article, which are being illustratedhere for thefirst time, are from a sketchbookmeasuring 512 by 103/4"inches, in a private collection. T HREETIMES IN THE I850s, George Fuller (1822- Fuller was no stranger to the life of the itinerant 1884)visited the Deep South, in each case remaining portrait artist. During the 1840s this native of Deerfield, there for several months. His primary motive was to Massachusetts, was almost constantly on the move, seek fresh opportunities for portrait commissions in painting faces in various parts of New England and areas where the competition might reasonably be sup- western New York State. It was simply necessary posed less fierce than in New York, Fuller's adopted business, for the most part routine and often dull. The city during the decade.' Southern states, however, opened up surprising new avenues of experience to the Yankee painter. He re- SARAH BURNS, Assistant Professorin the School of Fine corded those in memoranda, in letters to Arts at Indiana University, has written several articles experiences on nineteenth-centurypainting, including "A Study of family and friends in the North, and in a fascinating the Life and Poetic Vision of George Fuller (1822- sketchbook containing his impressions of slave life. 1884)" published in the Autumn, 1981, issue of the Fuller used this sketchbook in Montgomery, Ala- JOURNAL. bama, during the winter of 1857-1858. The cardboard- The American Art Journal/Summer 1983 35 x ; bound pad, measuring 5V2 by 103/4 inches, contains *?? '; . seventy-eightdrawings, sixty-three in pencil and the w.: rest in and ink or ink wash. About *: . ..;.... ..:: . ."*'S:. '. .... .:.f k ??? ?::::;n;:- pen thirtydepict ~~~~:?..*'I'I'E ???:? '????:::: .. * : :: b .:;*:?*;I: slaves and plantationscenes; the rest are landscapes, .:~~~~~~~~!ur :: studies of plant life, and the like. A few of the slave scenes are littlemore than thumbnail scribbles, crudely I:ii:: ?:::: ??' set down. The selectionpresented here representsthe 11. ??:.: best of Fuller's black genre drawings,in both the ar- sense. The later s tistic and the documentary drawings I.- ?I: provided motifs for several of Fuller's black genre paintings(see Figs. 24, 25 and 27-31). The materialin the Alabamasketchbook, which remainsin the Fuller family, has never untilnow been published. The purposes of this article are to examine the Fullerletters and sketches, whichtogether comprise a unique illustrateddiary createdduring a most critical periodof Americanhistory, and to discussmore briefly the subsequent paintings and their significance.In orderto amplifyand corroborate Fuller's own observa- tions, other personalaccounts of the Southernexperi- ence and slave conditions will be cited where ap- propriate. Fuller's first two trips producedno sketches of importance,but his diaryjottings and lettersare worth citing, since they incorporateprose vignettes of the painter's daily life in strange, new places. In late November, 1849,Fuller boarded a steamerbound from New York to Charleston,South Carolina.He carried with him a letter of recommendationto a Charlesto- nian, Elisius Mowry, from his friend, the landscape Fig. 2. Fuller. OUR PAGEHARRY. February 22, 1858. Pencil on painter, SanfordGifford (1823-1880).2 It is not clear paper. whether Fuller initiallyplanned to establishhimself in Charlestonor to move on shortly.The prospectsfor businessin Charlestonmay not havebeen encouraging. Whatever the situation, Fuller did proceed almost immediatelyto Augusta,Georgia, where he remained 1000 ... amongst those baptizedwas one so white I from early December, 1849, until August 1, 1850. could not detect the dark shade." Later that month these months Fuller was active both in During quite Fuller called at a plantationin the countrysidenear makingand in teachingart. Augustaand "Saw Negroesat workin the fieldsfor the His terse entries an outlineof his journal provide firsttime, men and women, ploughingand planting."4 routines. On one "Mrs. typical daily Februaryday However, a slave auctiondid producea hot burst Dodge sat. Improvedcrayon of child. Madean outline of indignantsentiment. In a letterhome Fullerrelated for her frombrother's In the on picture. eveningcalled his reactionsto the sale of a lovely youngquadroon: Miss Wilde." A fortnightlater, Fuller "Paintedon of child. Gave lesson in Inthe Who is thisgirl with eyes largeand black? The bloodof the picture drawing. evening white and dark races is at enmity in her veins - the called on Mrs. Gould."3 former predominated.About 3/4white says one dealer. With one notable exception, Fuller's entries on Three fourthsblessed, a fractionaccursed. She is under aspects of slave life were equally terse and neutral. thy feet, white man. ... Is she not your sister?... She Twice he witnessed mass baptisms.In mid-February impressesme withsadness! The pensiveexpression of her he recorded: "Clear weather. Walked on the river finelyformed mouth and her drooping eyes seemedto ask for .... Now she looks now her fall bank. Saw on the shore. sympathy up, eyes Negroes baptizing opposite before the rudegaze of those who are but calculatingher Their songs came agreeablyacross the water."Again, charms or serviceablequalities.... Oh, is beauty so in April, "Attended a baptism of Negroes. About cheap!s 36 Burs/Fuller Thirty years later Fuller, looking back to this distant memory, painted The Quadroon (see Fig. 28), which will be considered later in this article. Six years passed before Fuller again set out for the South. He had been moderately successful in New York. Indeed, in February, 1856, he wrote that he had as much business painting portraits as he could handle and was raising his price from fifty to seventy-five dollars.6 Now, however, he was in debt to his friend William Ames, a New York merchant from whom Fuller had borrowed money in order to send his tuber- cular brother Elijah out West, where the dry climate might improve his condition. Fuller believed that if he set up a portrait studio in Montgomery, Alabama, he could, with hard work, clear one hundred dollars a week and would soon pay off his debt to Ames.7 His choice of Alabama was almost certainly influencedby a painter friend, Edwin Billings (1823-1893), whom he had known since the 1840s, when Billings lived near Deerfield. Billings, also a portrait painter, customarily wintered in Alabama, and he must have assured Fuller that the demand for portraits in the provinces was sufficiently high to justify the venture. Fuller and Billingsbegan theirjourneyon December 17, 1856. They took a train from New York to Balti- more, a steamboat to Petersburg, Virginia, and then continued the trip overland, again by train. By Christ- mas they were settled in Montgomery. Fuller lingered there only until January 15, when he left Billings and headed downriver to to Mobile, thinking perhaps reap Fig. 3. Fuller. ELLIS. January,1858. Pencil on paper. greater rewards in that more cosmopolitan, cultured, and hedonistic city on the Gulf of Mexico. Three days before his departure, Fuller had at- tended a slave auction which, while it did not arouse the emotion fueled by the 1850 sale in Georgia, did impress him as a most melancholy sight: A similar had also amazed another I saw a scene soldat auction! with sight Northerner, today,Negroes together the architect Frederick Law Olmsted horses and other cattle. It was full of suggestionswhich I landscape (1822- will not pursuenow. The poorchildren, men, women, and 1903), who had voyaged down the Alabama River on littleones lookedsad. Whata fateis theirs!No one to raise the steamboat Fashion in 1852. "There was something a voice for themand God aboveus all.8 truly Western," he wrote, "in the direct, reckless way in which the boat was loaded," the cotton bales On the steamboat that carried him down the Ala- coming down the almost "perpendicularbank" with a "fearful bama River, Fuller found diversion in observing the 10 velocity." which took place duringnumerous stops cotton-loading In Mobile, Fuller at a house where at riverbank towns: stayed boarding there were fifty lodgers and "nearly half as many negro It was interestingto see the negroesload cotton - It was servants." Homesick for simple, familiar pleasures, rolleddown the steep highbluffs of the riverin the most Fuller wrote to his brother, "I wish I was with you [in recklessmanner, but, the fellows were so accustomedto the] North with a bitter wind in my teeth, enjoying a the that to save most of it from thing they managed going sleigh ride and a cheerful fire and pleasant friends in the into the river- At some placesthere were slidesor race Mobile's ways of threehundred feet downwhich it wouldcome like evening." ambience seemed dangerously lightningand reboundten or twelve feet from concus- glamorous: "Much money is made here, and the people sion - finallywe hadon boardnear two thousandbales.9 seem veryfast."11 He did not, however, allow himself The American Art Journal/Summer 1983 37 Fig. 4. Fuller. MARIAH. December, 1857- January,1858. Pencil and inkwash on paper. f } to be distracted by regattas, horseraces, cockfights, or this time I have not lost one hour but worked con- 2 balls. In April he told his brother Elijah, "I feel as if I stantly (Sundays and all I am sorry to say)." Fuller had sold myself to Mammon ... [but] I sent Ames left Mobile to journey north in the middle ofJune, 1857. $300." At the end of his time in Mobile he informed his He spent the summer, according to his custom, in brother, "I have been here just five months . during Deerfield. 38 Burns/Fuller Fig. 5. Fuller. GRACE.Late December,1857. Pencil on paper. Detail of sketchbookpage. Fig. 6. Fuller. SLEEPINGCHILD. Early February, 1858. Pencil on paper. Encouragedby his toilsomebut profitablewinter December, 1857. Rather than move on to Mobile, as he in Mobile, Fuller decided to return with Billings to had originally intended, Fuller now elected to stay in Alabama for the winter of 1857-1858.