The Scandal of the Cellist and the Washtub.

In the age of social media, a reproduction of a nineteenth-century image has been doing the rounds that has caused an unexpected reaction in the immediate environment of the Black Lives Matter protests, taken to be a racist trope between an enslaved African-American and a white slave-owner. As a result it has received censure, being called out as racist, and oftentimes removed from posts because of the narrative that it appears to convey.

At length I have decided to write about the scandal and there are two possible reasons that come to mind for doing so. One that comes to mind (in no specific order) is that knowing the image in its original form and having enjoyed it for what it represents over many years, it seems a pity to deny the continued enjoyment for everybody that comes from it if there is no justification that supports its censure. Another is that whilst the image continues to circulate and attract a criticism it will continue to cause inevitable harm. If I can set the record straight, and if this blog can be brought to light each time the issue raises itself, then perhaps I can contribute to preventing the inadvertent harm that has arisen in the last few years or at least to putting it into context for I think there are concerns unique to the 21^st century that I think need to be aired. What I do propose to argue is that this particular digital version of the picture, created probably in the 1990s or early 2000s does inadvertently give the appearance of being problematic, and with that in mind, we have to think carefully about the re-use of this image, rather than other reproductions of the same 19th century print, but that is because of the accident of technology that has manipulated how the image looks. Neither the artist who conceived the original image, the engraver, nor the print-seller who added colour to the image are to blame, and the way it appears on a smart phone is a freak-coincidence that is simply the fault of pixels.

The digital image that perpetuates on social media is fascinating it its own right because of its own low quality. Below is an enlarged section of the floor in the image. Those of us who remember the internet of the 1990s can cast into our memories to see when bitmap files looked just like this, when a computer screen was a cathode-ray monitor, and files were compressed in order to be communicated on a web powered by dial-up modems. It was probably downloaded onto the internet when owning a Nokia and playing Snakes on an LCD display was the cutting edge of technology. If we look at the image we see the slightly tessellated, or cross-hatched look to it which is a problem of an image that has been compressed as a bitmap, resized, turned into a jpeg, probably regenerated as a screenshot, and along the way the colours have begun to bleed over each other as different types of digital algorithm have recalculated the image. It is extraordinary to find an image that may be over 25 years old still doing the rounds on the internet, let alone one in such unstable condition. In the magnified area above you can particularly see how the broom (lower centre of the image) no longer has definition as a result of the colours bleeding into one and other presenting blurred the boundaries that are not a part of the original image.

To understand the image further we need to understand that it derives from an engraving and that, in the Victorian world, one of the services provided by print sellers was to colour the engravings by hand. The result is that every surviving example that has gone through this process is to some extent unique and different print sellers would colour them according to their own ideas, but versions of this engraving are at any rate very scarce, and the fashion for tinting engravings seems to have been on the wane by the 1880s. Indeed the scarcity seems to be a contributing reason of why we repeatedly see the same low-resolution image appear on facebook, because there are no others on the internet to replace it.

Nevertheless the illustration above shows a second different tinted example. There are obvious differences like the carpet, interior of the violin case and the watering can being completely different colours. Going further on the issue of digital degradation of the image you can see a little better that the bristles of the scrubbing brush have become less visible, and that the gaps between the floor-boards, or the gentleman’s shirt collar have disappeared. Hence, any colouring that exists (aside from the consequence of shading in the underlying print) is the consequence of a later colourist, and not a part of the original artist’s intentions. However it is not as simple as that, because the appearance that the colour portrays is the consequence of digital compression, the consequence of invariably viewing the image on a small phone screen and a cognitive visual perception.

In fact, when I subjected the image to analysis I found that the darkest areas of the face were the consequence of shading showing through from the original print that was designed to denote shadow, and that in the clear areas of the face and arm there were clear pink and white flesh tones. When we compare this with the male we see that the shading of the face as the artist intended is similar, but the man appears whiter as a consequence of reflected light on his forehead, and the quantity of exposed white hair.

This shows that whoever coloured the lithograph a century-or-so ago was not thinking of any racial difference between the old man and the woman. Seen at this level of magnification, there is also a clear difference in the choice of colour than in the browns and blacks used for the cello that she is cleaning, pigments more likely to be used if there was a racial agenda. The shading of the original engraving can be compared in the illustration below. When tinted with the same watercolour paint, this would inevitably lead to the woman appearing marginally darker than the man.

Part of the point of this blog is to make available a high-resolution digital image of the original engraving so that it can be found in the public domain more easily. Having had prior knowledge of nineteenth-century versions long before this surfaced in my corner of the internet, my perspective to interpret the image has been understandably different (in my hometown, a copy of the picture hung in the local pub, it’s been a fixture in my life for a frighteningly long time). However, at this juncture it does seem important to comment on the ethical problems of what we see on Social Media today, for this repeatedly attracts anti-racist outrage. In all likelihood the c.1990s digital image only became contentious because of how technology to view it has changed – I have tried to show with the magnified images how even the scale of seeing it on a computer screen versus a smart phone will experience colour separation that is sufficiently different to produce a variety of cognitive responses to the skin tones. This is a fascinating case study of colour perception, digital degeneration, the consequences of technological progress and many other things. However, it is those who deliberately use this image in the 21^st century in order to create narratives about race who have to weigh the moral balance of whether the negative representation of this image contributes to harm.

Another part of the contention about the image is that it shows the kind of scene that is familiar to an American eye with roles that were played in society by slaves and slave-owners. If the viewer assumes that this is an American image, then the assumption that the woman is a slave is reasonable, and the image exists from a period when there was a great deal of printed images appearing from America. However, this is not an American image. i

The earliest example of the image is the engraving published in the London Illustrated News on 27 April 1889, and was reprinted in May 1891 in The Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times, April and May being the time of year when it was customary in England, as in other parts of the world, to do the spring clean when everything would be taken out, cleaned and put back. The title of the engraving is given as “Spring Cleaning or a Diligent Housekeeper”, emphasising the reason for the engraving as satire.

If one wants to understand the sensitivities of a housekeeper consider a reading of Sherlock Holmes. His landlady Mrs Hudson frequently protests that she “is not their housekeeper” whilst performing the roles of one forming an appropriate and relatable experience. In fact the first Sherlock Holmes epic was published in 1887, two years before Louis Gunnis engraving was published – the picture and the tales of the detective both speak to the same culture, circumstances and reality. We even know that the artist Gunnis had a housekeeper, Elizabeth Runnacles (in later life, at least) for they are recorded as the two residents of his home in Clapham in the 1939 Registration Act. Illustrated below (also from 1939) is the cinema depiction of Hudson, Holmes and Dr Watson a viewing of which provides a satisfactory example of the context to which this all applies.

To a British eye, there is nothing in the painting that is unfamiliar to a domestic scene in England at the time. On August 1, 1834, Britain passed the Slavery Abolition Act, outlawing the owning, buying, and sellings of humans as property throughout its colonies around the world, so the concepts that tied race to domestic service were alien to the British public at large of the 1880s were in the aftermath of the Abolitionist movement and a racial element would be a very odd trope for an illustration intended for dissemination to a local British audience. Understandably there is an intersection between domestic interiors in Britain and America because there was a shared architectural heritage, and undeniably the interior looks as likely to be American as British, but it simply is not because there is nothing about the commissioning of the engraving that relates to an American experience, and neither is there any case for it being anything other than a London scene by a London artist for a  London audience. Although some engravings were re-circulated overseas as part of the printing trade, there is no evidence that this was separately published or distributed in the United States of America.

Recently a further dimension to the discussion emerged when a second version of the painting created in 1897 came for sale in Davison’s Auction House in Australia. The painting reveals a little bit about the printing history of this, as it is identical to a reproduction under copyright by the booksellers Mawson & Swan of Newcastle of the same year (implying they may have been the owners of it). In order to engrave the London Illustrated News version there is an approach to the composition to make it clearer so that the narrative is not distracted. With the use of colour, Gunnis no longer had those concerns, so the background, furniture and such like is more complex. Nevertheless, this is close enough to the 1887 engraving that we can trust that it communicates the painter’s same intentions. The relative skin tones that are reflected in the facial features of the man and woman are apparent and relevant to the narrative of the image contributing to the heavy shadow cast over her face in the engraving. Crucially the pinkish skin tones of the housekeeper’s forearms are clear.

For those of us who repair instruments, there are always the stories of well-intended cleaning causing irreparable damage, and this is one of fleetingly few historic images that fits beautifully into the dark-humour of our profession. I only ask you please post a better version of the image if you want to share it on social media. With this reassurance, we can enjoy the painting and the engravings that come from it as one of the most entertaining of the nineteenth century without any question of inappropriateness. There should be a pun about good clean fun somewhere there.

Hopefully one day this blog will read very strangely indeed!