Belizaire and the Frey Children

 This blog is based on an article that appeared in the Smithsonian Magazine on 08/10/2023 written by Sarah Kuta entitled “ Who was the Enslaved Child Painted Out of this 1837 Portrait?”. It is an important piece because it also features an African-American enslaved teenager called Belizaire, who was nearly lost to history and to posterity. He was almost obliterated from the historical record.

Here are the facts:

1837: Frederick Frey, a German-American businessman and banker who lived in Louisiana commissioned an artist to paint a portrait of his 3 white children: Elizabeth, Leontine, and Frederick, Jr. It also included their enslaved black boy Belizaire, a 15 -year old caretaker of his children.

1822: Experts believe that Belizaire was born in 1822.The Frey family purchased him when he was 6 years old. In 1856, along with his mother Sally, they sold him to the Evergreen Plantation.

During the Jim Crow era, someone in the  Frey family painted over Belizaire, erasing him from the historical record, thinking for good.

But the painting has now been restored, and Belizaire’s likeness revealed. The Metropolitan Museum  bought the painting and it will soon be on display as “ one of the  rarest most fully documented American portraits of a Black individual depicted with the family of his white enslaver.” according  to the Museum’s promotional announcement, which Ms Kuta included in her article.

Bibliographic Salute: Driskell, David G: Two Centuries of Black American Art: Lewis, Samella: African American Art and Artists: ISBN: 978-0520-239350.Among Others: Blackness At MOMA. Jackson Black Artists Shaping the World.

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