Miss Jim-Ima Crow
- Object:
- Place of origin:
London, England (printed and published)
- Date:
1840 (printed and published)
- Artist/Maker:
William Henry Hunt, born 1790 - died 1864 (artist)
Fairland, Thomas, born 1804 - died 1852 (lithographer)
- Materials and Techniques:
- Museum number:
- Gallery location:
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Winsome children humorously aping the manners of adults were a popular subject for genre scenes. In the 1830s the artist William Henry Hunt exhibited a series of twenty such images at the Old Water-Colour Society in London. These were later produced as lithographs and published as Hunt’s Comic Sketches (1844). The series included two images of black children. This image, which was originally exhibited as ‘Miss Jem-ima Crow’ but re-titled ‘Miss Jim-Ima Crow – A West Indian Cinderella’, and a companion piece ‘Jim Crow’, re-titled ‘Master James Crow – Out of his Element’ (museum number E.332-1901).
Both works appear to have been painted from living models who have been posed with studio props to suggest a narrative. Jim-Ima Crow (whose name references ‘Jim Crow’ the comic blackface act first seen in London in 1836, pictured on a poster above Jim-Ima here) kneels by the hearth, bellows in hand, tending the fire and the coffee pot. Like Jim-Ima, coffee was another form of colonial export.
Physical description
Lithograph depicting black girl sitting beside fire hearth, holding a pair of bellows. A coffee pot rests beside her.
Place of Origin
London, England (printed and published)
Date
1840 (printed and published)
Artist/maker
William Henry Hunt, born 1790 - died 1864 (artist)
Fairland, Thomas, born 1804 - died 1852 (lithographer)
Materials and Techniques
Lithograph
Dimensions
Height: 55.9 cm, Width: 40.6 cm
Descriptive line
'Miss Jim-Ima Crow', lithograph by Thomas Fairland after William Henry Hunt, 1840
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Image of the Black, Vol. IV, Part 2, Cambridge, Mass. & London, England: Harvard University Press, 1989, pp.61 & 2
'Winsome children depicted from a viewpoint of indulgent superiority were among the most frequent performers in humorous genre scenes. William Henry Hunt was responsible for a whole series. Two were of black children, exhibited at the Old Water-Colour Society in London with the titles 'Jim Crow' (1837) and 'Miss Jem-Ima Crow' (1839). Lithographs after them were subsequently published in a volume of 'Hunt’s Comic Sketches' mainly composed of images of white children aping their elders … In this collection the two watercolours of black children were given obviously comic titles: 'Master James Crow – Out of his Element' and 'Miss Jim-Ima Crow – a West Indian Cinderella'. Both must have been painted from living models posed and surrounded with studio ‘props’ to suggest a story. The boy, out of his element (the sun), warms himself in front of a stove. The West Indian Cinderella kneels by the hearth, unable to go to the ball suggested by the print of a dancing black labelled James Crow.'
Black Victorians, Black People in British Art. Edited by Jan Marsh, Lund Humphries, 2005, p.136
'In the 1830s William Henry Hunt exhibited a sequence of twenty humorous images of children later lithographed as 'Hunt’s Comic Sketches' (1844). Some featured black children, in amusing or sentimental scenes.'
Subjects depicted
Bellows; Coffee pot; Hearth
Categories
Prints; Children & Childhood; Black History
Collection code
PDP
