Slave Market Scene on the Kambia River, Coast of Africa
In a crowd of people, a European examines a slave, while another is being whipped. A slave ship at sea is in background. The Kambia River is in the Forests of West Africa region. This woodcut is a copy of a 64 x 90 inch oil painting (titled, Traite d'Esclaves dans l'Ouest de l'Afrique), done in 1840 by Francois-Auguste Biard (1798-1882), a French painter. The painting, today located in the Wilberforce House Museum, Hull (England), was first exhibited at the Salon (Paris) of 1835. There is no evidence that Biard ever witnessed this scene. Color images of the painting are published in Marcus Wood, Blind Memory (Manchester Univ. Press, 2000), plate 5, and Hugh Honour, The Image of the Black in Western Art (Menil Foundation, Harvard University Press, 1989), vol. 4, pt. 1, fig. 89. The black/white image is also reprinted in James Walvin, Slavery and the Slave Trade (Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1983, fig. 17) but with a misleading caption and a misspelling of the artist's name.
Image Title
Slave Market Scene on the Kambia River, Coast of Africa
RegID
SI-OB-745
Date
1840
Title
Slave Market Scene on the Kambia River, Coast of Africa
Source
Richard Drake, Revelations of a Slave Smuggler (New York, 1860), opposite title page.
Language
French
Item sets
Slave Sales & Auctions: African Coast & the Americas
Spatial Coverage
Africa--Forests
Reproduced In
Richard Drake, Revelations of a Slave Smuggler (New York, 1860), opposite title page.
Researchers
Jerome Handler; Michael Tuite; Henry B. Lovejoy Graduate Research Assistants: Tiffany Beebe; Travis May
Last Updated
10-Jun-16
Identifier
C003