BLACK FIGURES/ENGLISH LANDSCAPE

Abstract

IN ONE OF HIS LAST CANVASES — worked on for some six years and unfinished at his death — the distinguished genre and landscape painter, William Mulready (1786–1863), famous for his depiction of children and childhood, produced one of the most resonant and complex images of race and Empire of the mid-nineteenth century.¹ Titled The Toy Seller and set in an emblematic rural landscape, it displays a mother holding a child of between one and two years old, while a kneeling pedlar respectfully proffers a rattle from a basket of similarly humble toys (Figure 19). The infant, however, perversely refuses to be tempted. Its body and gaze are turned awkwardly away from the toy seller, its shrugged shoulders and unhappy expression graphically suggest the unease provoked by the stranger’s importunities, or perhaps merely his presence. Meanwhile the mother’s look is turned with gentle concern on the distressed child. The pedlar too looks towards the baby with a still amd practiced watchfulness, as if waiting for the mother to coax the child into a more receptive mood. The toy seller is black; the mother and child are white.