The Planter's Prospect: Privilege and Slavery in Plantation Paintings

Author:   John Michael Vlach
Publisher:   The University of North Carolina Press
Edition:   New edition
ISBN:  

9780807826867


Pages:   240
Publication Date:   31 March 2002
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Awaiting stock   Availability explained


Our Price $184.67 Quantity:  
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The Planter's Prospect: Privilege and Slavery in Plantation Paintings


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Overview

This illustrated volume explores the statements of power and ironic invasions encoded in plantation paintings created from the 19th century to the early 20th century. It focuses on oil paintings, but includes consideration of watercolours, drawings, map illustrations, lithographs, and popular prints. Although 19th-century American landscapes typically were painted from a high vantage point, looking down from above, southern landscapes that featured plantations diverged from this convention in telling ways. Portraits of planters' landholdings were often depicted from a point below the plantation house, a perspective that directs the viewers' gaze upwards and, as John Vlach observes, echoes the deference and respect the planter class assumed was its due. Moreover, Vlach notes, slaves were rarely represented in plantation paintings made before the Civil War. After the war and the abolition of slavery, he argues, a wistful revisionism seems to have restored slaves - still toiling in the service of the masters - to the landscapes they had created and on which they were so cruelly mistreated. At the heart of this volume are six artists - Francis Guy, Charles Fraser, Adrien Persac, Currier & Ives chief artist Fanny Palmer, William Aiken Walker, and Alice Ravenel Huger Smith - whose collective body of work spans the period between 1800 and 1935 and documents plantations across the South, from Maryland to Louisiana.

Full Product Details

Author:   John Michael Vlach
Publisher:   The University of North Carolina Press
Imprint:   The University of North Carolina Press
Edition:   New edition
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   1.043kg
ISBN:  

9780807826867


ISBN 10:   0807826863
Pages:   240
Publication Date:   31 March 2002
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Out of Print
Availability:   Awaiting stock   Availability explained

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Reviews

Vlach introduces us to half a dozen artists whose pictures reveal more than they could realize about how white Americans chose to misremember the plantation world. - Peter H. Wood, Duke University


Author Information

JOHN MICHAEL VLACH is professor of American studies and anthropology at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. His previous books include Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery and Plain Painters: Making Sense of American Folk Art.

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