Kitchen Ball at White Sulphur Springs, Virginia
Artist
Christian Friedrich Mayr
American, born Germany (Bavaria), 1803–1851
Date1838
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions24 x 29 1/2 in. (61 x 74.9 cm)
Frame: 32 1/2 x 38 1/4 x 4 1/2 in. (82.6 x 97.2 x 11.4 cm)
Frame: 32 1/2 x 38 1/4 x 4 1/2 in. (82.6 x 97.2 x 11.4 cm)
ClassificationsPaintings
Credit LinePurchased with funds from the State of North Carolina
Object number52.9.23
On View
On viewFrederick Marryat, Diary in America, Jules Zanger, ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960), 272–73, also 335, no. 11.
The Portrayal of the Negro in American Painting (exhibition catalogue) (Brunswick, ME: The Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 1964), cat. no. 15, illus. (b-w).
Marvin S. Sadik, "Preview: The Negro in American Art," Art in America 52(June 1964), 74–83, illus. (b-w) 79.
American Paintings to 1900: Catalogue of Paintings, Vol. 1, 2nd ed. (Raleigh:North Carolina Museum of Art, 1966), no. 44, illus. (b-w).
John R. Alden, Pioneer America (New York: Knopf, 1966), illus. (b-w) following 162.
Glyndon G. Van Deusen, et al, Illustrious Americans: Henry Clay (Morristown, NJ: Silver Burdett Co., 1967), illus. (detail, color) 105.
The Portrayal of the Negro in American Painting (exhibition catalogue) (New York: Forum Gallery, 1967), cat. no. 6, illus. (b-w).
Mahonri Sharp Young, "Letter from U. S. A.: 'To See New Things," Apollo 87 (February 1968), mentioned 142.
The American Heritage History of the Making of the Nation (New York: American Heritage Pub. Co., 1968), illus. (detail, color) 352.
The Annals of America, Vol. 7, 1841–1849: Manifest Destiny (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1968), illus. (b-w) 34.
Herman Warner Williams, Jr., Mirror to the American Past: A Survey of American Genre Painting, 1750–1900 (Greenwich, CN: New York Graphic Society, 1973), discussed 77–78, illus. (b-w) fig. 58.
Richard N. Current et al, United States History: Search for Freedom (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman & Co., 1974), illus. (detail, color) 212.
Patricia Hills, The Painter's America: Rural and Urban Life, 1810–1910 (exhibition catalogue) (New York: Praeger, 1974), discussed 58, illus. (b-w) fig. 70.
Agnes de Mille, The Dance in America (Washington, DC, U. S. Information Service, 19[?]), discussed 6, illus. (b-w) 7.
Cortez F. Enloe, Jr., "Food in the Ascent of America, Historiette III: From the Eye Inward," Nutrition Today 11 (January/February 1976), 20–24, discussed and illus. (b-w) 20.
Joshua C. Taylor, America as Art (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1976), illus. (b-w) 83.
Hilton Kramer, “Art View” [review of NCFA exhibition], New York Times (New York, NY), May 9, 1976, noted 57.
James Edward Fox, “The Negro Theme in American Art from Colonial Times through the Nineteenth Century” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1979), discussed 122–123, illus. (b-w) pl. 4-30.
Victoria Donohoe, “19th century exhibit is interesting and frustrating,” Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, PA), Nov. 20, 1977, 14-L.
Edgar Peters Bowron, ed., Introduction to the Collections (Chapel Hill: published for the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, by The University of North Carolina Press, 1983), illus. (b-w) 236.
Jessie Poesch, The Art of the Old South: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture and the Products of Craftsmen, 1560–1860 (New York: Knopf, 1983), discussed 291, illus. (color) 292.
Arthur S. Marks, "Wilkie and the Reproductive Print," in Sir David Wilkie of Scotland (exhibition catalogue) (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1987), 73–95, discussed 94, illus. (b-w) fig. 43.
Guy C. McElroy, Facing History: The Black Image in American Art, 1710–1940 (exhibition catalogue) (San Francisco: Bedford Arts in association with the Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1990), discussed xvii, 33, illus. (color).
Edward D.C. Campbell, Jr., and Kym S. Rice, eds., Before Freedom Came: African-American Life in the Antebellum South (exhibition catalogue) (Richmond, VA: Museum of the Confederacy, 1991), illus. (color) pl. 7.
Mark Grimsley, "'We Will Vindicate the Right:' An Account of the Life of Jefferson Davis," Civil War Times 30 (July–August 1991), 30–76, illus. (color) 34.
Elizabeth Johns, American Genre Painting: The Politics of Everyday Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), discussed 114, also 231, no. 18, illus. (color) pl. 12
Introduction to the Collections, rev. ed. (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1992), illus. (b-w) 228.
William Burns Jones, This Picturesque Spot: Fauquier White Sulphur Springs, unpublished M.A. thesis (George Mason University, 1993), discussed 63–64 [see NCMA Library].
Brenda E. Stevenson, "From Bondage to Freedom: Slavery in America," Underground Railroad (Official National Park Handbook) (Washington, DC: Publications Office, National Park Service, 1997), illus. (color) 42.
Helene M. Kastinger Riley, "Christian Friedrich Mayr," Antiques (November 1998), 693, illus. (color) 692.
John W. Coffey, entry for Kitchen Ball at White Sulphur Springs, Virginia, in North Carolina Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections, Rebecca Martin Nagy, ed. (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1998), 196, illus. (color).
Joshua D. Rothman, "'To be Freed from Thate Curs and Let at Liberty': Interracial Adultery and Divorce in Antebellum Virginia," The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 106, No. 4 (Autumn 1998), illus. (b-w) 473.
Eileen Southern and Josephine Wright, Images: Iconography of Music in African-American Culture (1770s–1920s) (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2000), 70–73, illus. (b-w) 82.
John A. Cuthbert, Early Art and Artists in West Virginia (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2000), 43–44, 213, illus. (color) 44.
Michael D. Harris, Colored Pictures: Race and Visual Representation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 43–44, illus. (color) 44, fig. 14.
William M. S. Rasmussen and Robert S. Tilton, Old Virginia: The Pursuit of a Pastoral Ideal (exhibition catalogue) (Charlottesville: Howell Press for the Virginia Historical Society, 2003), briefly discussed 111–112, illus. (color) 112.
Tonya Bolden, Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2005), illus. (color) 9.
Teresa A. Carbone, et al, American Paintings in the Brooklyn Museum: Artists Born by 1876, Vol. 1 (Brooklyn: Brooklyn Museum in association with D Giles Ltd., London, 2006), noted 18, illus. (b-w) 16.
Rebecca J. Fraser, Courtship and Love among the Enslaved in North Carolina (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2007), illus. (color) front book jacket.
Juretta Jordan Heckscher, “The Afro-Chesapeake Inventions of American Dance,” in Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader, Julie Malnig, ed. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009), mentioned 24, illus. (b-w) 25, fig. 1.1.
Richard J. Powell, Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), discussed 26, 29, 33–40, illus. (color) 28, fig. 8, and details (b-w) 34.
Bruce Robertson, “Stories for the Public, 1830–1860,” in American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915 (exhibition catalogue), H. Barbara Weinberg and Carrie Rebora Barratt, eds. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009), discussed and illus. (color) 69, fig. 66.
Roberta Smith, “One Nation, in Broad Strokes,” (exhibition review) The New York Times (October 16, 2009), mentioned C21.
John W. Coffey, entry for Kitchen Ball at White Sulphur Springs, Virginia, in North Carolina Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections, rev. ed. (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 2010), 408, illus. (color) 409.
Tess Sol Schwab, “African Americans: Seeing and Seen, 1766–1916,” in Antiques and Fine Art (January/February 2010), discussed 249–250, illus. (color) 249, fig. 3.
Clayborne Carson, Emma J. Lapsansky-Werner, and Gary B. Nash, The Struggle for Freedom: A History of African Americans, Combined Volume/Second Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Prentice-Hall, 2011), illus. (b-w) 168.
Marvin McAllister, Whiting Up: Whiteface Minstrels & Stage Europeans in African American Performance (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011), discussed 36–37, illus. (b-w) 38.
Sharyn R. Udall, Dance and American Art (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012), briefly discussed 34–35, illus. (color) 34, fig. 16.
Ivy G. Wilson, Specters of Democracy: Blackness and the Aesthetics of Politics in the Antebellum U.S. (Oxford University Press, 2011), briefly discussed 110, illus. 111, fig. 5.4.
Ellen Carol DuBois and Lynn Dumenil, Through Women’s Eyes, Volume One: To 1900, 3rd edition (Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012), briefly discussed and illus. (b-w) 213.
Phil Jamison, Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics: Roots and Branches of Southern Appalachian Dance (Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Chicago Press, 2015), illus. (b-w) 49, fig. 4.4.
Constance Valis Hill, “In the Eye of the Beholder: The Black Presence in the Art of American Dance,” in Dance: American Art 1830–1960 (exhibition catalogue) (Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts, distributed by Yale University Press, 2016), cat. 16, discussed 42, illus. (color) 43 (also mentioned 56).
Mia L. Bagneris, Colouring the Caribbean: Race and the Art of Agostino Brunias (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2018), discussed 120, 123–24, 132n.33, illus. (color) 121, no. 32.
Exhibition HistoryNew York, NY, National Academy of Design, "20th Annual Exhibition," 1845, no. 300 (as Kitchen Ball at the White Sulphur Springs in Virginia).
Brooklyn, NY, Brooklyn Institute, "Fifth Annual Exhibition," October 27,1846, no. 74 or 109 (the first as Kitchen Ball at White Sulphur Springs in Virginia, the second as Kitchen Ball at White Sulphur Springs, Va., and owned by H. C. Murphy, Esq.).
Brunswick, ME, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, The Portrayal of the Negro in American Painting, May 15-September 6, 1964, no. 15, illus. (b-w).
New York, NY, Forum Gallery, The Portrayal of the Negro in American Painting, September 1967, no. 6, illus. (b-w).
New York, NY, Whitney Museum of American Art, "The Painter's America: Rural and Urban Life, 1810-1910," September 20-November 10, 1974; Houston, TX, Museum of Fine Arts, December 5, 1974-January 19, 1975; Oakland, CA, Oakland Museum, February 10-March 30, 1975, discussed 58, illus. (b-w) fig. 70.
Boston, MA, City Hall, "America through the Eyes of German Immigrant Painters," July 1975, illus. (color) 16.
Washington, DC, National Collection of Fine Arts, America as Art, April 30-November 7, 1976, no. 70, illus. (b-w), 83.
Washington, DC, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Facing History: The Black Image in American Art, 1710-1940, January 13-March 25, 1990; Brooklyn, NY, The Brooklyn Museum, April 20-June 25, 1990, 33, illus. (color).
Richmond, VA, Virginia Historical Society, "Old Virginia: The Pursuit of a Pastoral Ideal," February 15-June 8, 2003, 111-112, illus. (color) 112.
New York, NY, Metropolitan Museum of Art, "American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915," October 12, 2009-January 24, 2010; Los Angeles, CA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, February 28-May 23, 2010, cat. p. 69, illus. (color) 69, fig. 66.
Winston-Salem, NC, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, "Virtue, Vice, Wisdom and Folly: The Moralizing Tradition in American Art," September 18-December 31, 2010.
Detroit, MI, Detroit Institute of Arts, “The Art of American Dance: 1830–1960,” March 20–June 12, 2016; Denver, CO, Denver Art Museum, July 10–October 9, 2016; Bentonville, AR, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, November 5, 2016–January 30, 2017, cat. 16, discussed 42, mentioned 56, illus. (color) 43.
Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "The People's Collection, Reimagined," October 7, 2022–present. Object Rights Statement
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Luis Egidio Meléndez
circa 1770
