A Groom Holding an Arab Stallion (Primary Title)
Turkish Groom Holding an Arab Stallion (Alternate Title)
Carle Vernet, French, 1758 - 1836 (Artist)
This dynamic scene dramatizes the efforts of a determined servant as he labors to dominate the wild instincts of the horse he is training. Iconography involving enslaved people of color in French art between the 17th and 19th centuries largely derived from the uninformed conceptions of different cultures shared by many Europeans. While the representation of figures from distant social groups were undoubtedly motivated by sincere fascination with lands that appeared exotic to artists of the period, such depictions ultimately contributed to the racialization of these groups and perpetuated stereotypes and confusion about their cultures. The young man’s uniform is characteristic of North African servants contemporary with France’s colonization of Algeria in 1830. The bucking of the horse and the skillful response of its handler in Vernet’s painting express equally the hope for liberty and the independence of mind that were valorized by the Romantic movement.
The colonialist biases underlying and reinforced by works such as this one reflect a cultural ideology that contrasts significantly with the documentation of slavery that Edward Troye’s paintings from the same era comprise. Vernet’s enslaved African is viewed through a lens of the imagination that idealizes his condition of servitude while ignoring the inequities inherent in his social position.
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