Figure 3.8 Studio of Francis Harwood: Bust of a Man, black limestone on a yellow marble socle,
overall: 71.1 x 50.8 x 26.7 cm; base or socle: 21.6 cm, c.1758. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon
Collection.
Source: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, USA / Bridgeman Images.Western paintings featuring black servants were, as in the preceding century, very common. It was
fashionable for those living in affluent households to participate in the fashion for the possession and
display of black servants that waned only from the 1770s, when antislavery debates became more
prominent and overt displays of wealth became regarded as vulgar ostentation (Bindman and Weston,
2011, 146–148). Most blacks outside Africa were either slaves or descended from slaves. Black servants
and pages featured extensively in grand manner portraits, conversation pieces and genre scenes, and were
often used to suggest colonial landownership (Retford, Perry and Vibert, 2013, 24). An iron or silver
slave collar (sometimes inscribed with their owner’s name or coat of arms) or earring often signified
their servitude. They were represented in many forms of domestic service, taking part in court pageants or
in musical performances. Highly fashionable at the French court, black servants were sought increasingly
by other courts such as those in Prussia and Saxony. English court portraits often included a black servant
as a means of signifying an adherence to continental fashions. The social prestige gained through
ownership of a black servant was further enhanced by the European fashion of giving them, like white
servants, names drawn from European literature, history or mythology, a striking demonstration of their
appropriation by white culture. Black servants were rarely named in portrait titles.
The fashion for keeping and representing black servants reached its peak in France during the Regency of
1715–1723. A French edict of 1716 allowed aristocrats and wealthy financiers to bring slaves back from
the colonies. The intention was that they should eventually be returned but many stayed on as servants
(Bindman, Boucher and Weston, 2011b, 90–91). The practice of keeping black servants spread down the
social scale, from court to private mansions. As the century progressed black servants were generally
represented in art in less ceremonial, more integrated household roles or informal social gatherings, those
serving male masters often carrying out the role of groom or gentleman’s page. Such roles offered some
hope of a reasonable education or, in rare cases, social advancement, especially when servants had
converted to Christianity (Bindman, Kaplan and Weston, 2011, 202–203). In England, however, the
resurgence in aristocratic pride and values represented by the vogue for Reynolds’ grand portraits led to
the representation of more subservient roles. Blacks serving women members of a family were often
represented, alongside dogs, parrots and monkeys, as accessories, playthings or pets (Dabydeen, 1985,
28–30). They could signify their owners’ wealth or serve as foils to their owners’ whiteskinned beauty.
In diplomatic portraiture, as in a 1780 portrait of George Washington by John Trumbull (1756–1843), a
black servant might signify his owner’s ancient rank and chivalry at a time when America was seeking
allies in established European nations (Bindman and Weston, 2011, 125–144).
The roles played by black servants in aristocratic visual compositions and narratives were generally
marginal, at times solitary, and always subordinate to those of white figures. In Watteau’s fêtes galantes
black servants at times interact with and at other times stand apart from their white companions, serving
as proxy viewers of their moods and activities. Some, overlooked by their white companions, appear to
serve as witnesses to scenes of sexual intrigue or flirtation (Bindman, Boucher and Weston, 2011b, 91–
99). Their other roles included those of messengers, for example. in courtship scenes; luxury possessions;
fashion statements; or children of nature looking in adoration at their “superiors,” who were intended to
represent, by these means, social and cultural authority. Black servants were usually placed on the left
hand side of a painting, traditionally the “dark” or “sinister” (from the Latin for “left”) side. Some,
especially when wearing turbans or (incongruously) Turkish dress, evoked sexual license (Bindman and