1887

The Minstrels

Jean-François Raffaëlli

French, 1850 - 1924

In September 1887, Jean-François Raffaëlli wrote to a friend that he was working on a picture of minstrels performing to a group of children on a beach in Brighton, England. Minstrel performances featuring songs from the American South were popular family entertainment in the late 1800s. It is unclear whether the musicians are Black or white wearing blackface, but the impact of these performances is clear: they reinforced racial stereotypes and European attitudes toward Blackness.

The artist devoted his career to creating paintings of people he saw as marginalized by an increasingly urban and indifferent society: ragpickers, individuals experiencing homelessness, and older men unable to find jobs. In placing himself—and us—behind the performers and using a monochromatic palette of white, cream, gray, and black for the seaside scene, Raffaëlli highlights the sense of difference between the Black performers and their white audience.