Why be born a slave! (Pourquoi naître esclave!)

WALL LABEL: Why be born a slave?

In 1867 Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux was commissioned by Baron Haussmann to create a new fountain for the Jardin Marco Polo in Paris as part of the redevelopment of the Avenue du Luxembourg – one of Paris’s great Beaux-Arts boulevards. Carpeaux’s Fontaine de l’Observatoire was completed in 1874 and represents the four parts of the world, embodied by four female figures holding aloft the celestial globe. Pourquoi naître esclave!, which was first modelled in 1868 and exhibited the following year, is considered a preparatory work for the figure of Africa from  Carpeaux’s monumental fountain.

Several versions of this bust exist in various media, including marble, bronze and plaster. This patinated terracotta version was issued as a more commercial venture and was the only version to have the poignant title inscribed on its base. Carpeaux’s work is without doubt drawing attention to the history of slavery of Africa’s peoples. Although abolition had occurred in France some twenty years earlier, the United States had only ended slavery in 1865 after the American Civil War and slavery remained a much-debated topic. Carpeaux’s sculpture has become an iconic representation of slavery and the abolition movement around the world, yet from a twenty-first century-perspective we recognise that his depiction retains a nineteenth-century colonial sensibility in its representation of women of colour as sexualised objects of desire.