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.