MS01.01.03.B01.F25.023

22

hoeing cotton, warf scenes, Blacks travelling and goodtiming along
the way, market scenes, harvesting crops and cabin scenes are
among the many images [crossed out: he] Walker created in which
the subjects were often anatomically ill proportioned and used in
the same manner that one would use dolls or other lifeless props in a
still life. [crossed out: (Note)]

His important, major contribution can be seen as a chronicle of
Black life in the postwar South. This account of Walker's art
reveals the sentimental feelings white writers showed when viewing
his work: The New Orleans [u] Daily Picayune [/u], November 30, 1884,
writes (P. 2) "Walker's drawings of the Negro in his native cotton and
cane fields is immutably given with all of the half pathetic
raggedness of costume and love of gay colors that renders the
darky such good artistic material for one who has the skill."16

Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins provide us with a final glimpse
of the image of the Black American as shown, in painting prior to the
turn of the century. Homer found the black subject one to his liking
and used it for historical documentation, first for magazines,
then for general interpretation of the power of the black image
in the making of formal composition. Most interesting is the
contrast to be noted in the way Homer points Blacks in a cotton
field [crossed out: (SLIDE # ) [u] Cotton Pickers [/u] and] (SLIDE
#57) [u] Upland Cotton [/u] over and against Walker's version of the
same subject. Homer gives a living quality to the working figures that
does not occur in Walker's studies. [crossed out: But] Beyond this
note of criticism, Homer used black images as principal subjects
that included aspects of life other than the field experience, (SLIDE
#58) [u] The Turtle Pound [/u]. But Homer also produced sketches
with the pickaninny image of the (SLIDE #59) [u] Jolly Cook [/u]
dancing wildly while white soldiers looked