Description

Book Synopsis
A highly original history of American portraiture that places the experiences of enslaved people at its center

Trade Review
2024 Charles Rufus Morey Book Prize Shortlist, sponsored by CAA

“A model of method, an investigative tour de force that fluidly mixes laborious archival research and time-honored art historical savvy.”—Paul Staiti, author of Of Arms and Artists: The American Revolution through Painters’ Eyes

“Jennifer Van Horn accomplishes something that others have hardly imagined, relating a story of African American participation in and resistance to Euro-American visual culture throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”—Susan Rather, author of The American School: Artists and Status in the Late Colonial and Early National Era

“In this groundbreaking study, Jennifer Van Horn rightly defines production, viewing, representation, preservation, and destruction as acts of subversion that expand our understanding both of the lives of the enslaved and the multivalent ways in which early American portraiture functioned.”—Steven Nelson, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art

Portraits of Resistance

    Product form

    A Hardback by Jennifer Van Horn

    £42.75

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    RRP £45.00 – you save £2.25 (5%)

    Order before 4pm today for delivery by Sat 5 Sep 2026.

    10 in stock

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      Book details

      Publisher Yale University Press
      Published 25 October 2022
      ISBN-13 9780300257632
      978-0300257632
      ISBN-10 0300257635
      Also in:
      History of art Slavery, enslaved persons and abolition of slavery Ethnic groups and multicultural studies

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      A highly original history of American portraiture that places the experiences of enslaved people at its center

      Trade Review
      2024 Charles Rufus Morey Book Prize Shortlist, sponsored by CAA

      “A model of method, an investigative tour de force that fluidly mixes laborious archival research and time-honored art historical savvy.”—Paul Staiti, author of Of Arms and Artists: The American Revolution through Painters’ Eyes

      “Jennifer Van Horn accomplishes something that others have hardly imagined, relating a story of African American participation in and resistance to Euro-American visual culture throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”—Susan Rather, author of The American School: Artists and Status in the Late Colonial and Early National Era

      “In this groundbreaking study, Jennifer Van Horn rightly defines production, viewing, representation, preservation, and destruction as acts of subversion that expand our understanding both of the lives of the enslaved and the multivalent ways in which early American portraiture functioned.”—Steven Nelson, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art

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