A nine-minute New York Times video, not a written article. The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired Bélizaire and the Frey Children, an 1837 Louisiana portrait in which the figure of an enslaved child had been painted over and left hidden for more than a century. The video tells the story of the painting’s restoration and of Bélizaire himself.
The video
Archived copy — 9 min 35 s, 854×480, 20 MB.
Produced by Alexandra Eaton, Caroline Kim, Jeesoo Park, Natalie Reneau, Elliot deBruyn and Bron Moyi. Published 14 August 2023, and distributed through The Morning newsletter.
Transcript
Auto-generated from the video’s captions, so it carries no punctuation or speaker labels. Kept for searching rather than reading.
for over a hundred years this family portrait held a secret fourth figure that had been painted out now the Metropolitan Museum of Art has just acquired the painting one of the few 19th century portraits to realistically portray an enslaved person it’s incredible journey to the Met tells a story about the Erasure of black figures throughout American history and it might have been lost forever if not for Jeremy K Simeon sisters people of African descent are a part of this United States and we’ve got to be able to see ourselves in a historical context the paintings that survive are incredibly important because so few remain Simeon
an art collector first stumbled across the painting in an auction record the painting was unsigned but Jeremy thought it looked similar to the work of renowned portraitist giacomon then he found another auction record from a few years prior but in that image the enslaved child had been covered up the fact that the boy was covered up it haunted me I had to find out or where he ended up The Story begins with a relative of the white children in the painting Eugene grasser the family story was that and it was a favorite slave they had and he was painted in the picture and then for
whatever reason sometime later he was painted out no idea why Eugene’s Mother Audrey inherited the portrait for decades she kept it in the garage but in 1972 she donated the painting to the New Orleans Museum of Art Eugene’s mother told the museum the family story about the fourth figure but instead of displaying it the museum placed the painting in museum storage for 32 years I think that the story of this picture is really a story of institutional neglect Mia L banneries is a professor of art history and Africana studies at Tulane University work looked like when Noma acquired it and you can clearly see the
spectral outline of the figure when it came in it was not an exhibitable condition John Bullard started at the Museum the year after Noma acquired the painting and you could see the shadow but still it’s not attributed to a particular artist and the children were not identified the justification that the museum has given is that we didn’t know who the artist was we didn’t know who the sitters were those things are often unknown for images that feature people of African descent and may never be known and yet the objects themselves are still worthy of critical scholarship there are very few museums that can exhibit everything
they own one solution is to go through and decide what might be appropriately de-accessioned and sold in 2004 Noma sent the painting to be sold at auction an antique stealer bought the painting for six thousand dollars and had the painting restored the missing figure was revealed I I think in hindsight it was a mistake yes but mistakes happen after years of searching Jeremy finally acquired the painting in 2021 and brought it back to Louisiana I didn’t realize how important it was that I own pieces pertaining to my history until I realized how bad of a job some of these museums were doing the first thing
he did was hire Craig Crawford a painting conservator to do a second restoration we want to get that retouching off I would describe my mission is to get the painting as close as one can to the original intention so I’m just taking off layers they were added in the past [Music] I really wanted to find out about the boy of color in particular so I started talking to Katie Shannon what I wanted to show you this list she has a skill of finding enslaved people I specialize in the people that are seemingly lost to history but I’ve never tried to go from a painting backward
Katie looked back through the grasser family line [Music] to try and find someone wealthy enough to commission the portrait finally she found someone corally donois Frye Census records from the 1830s revealed who was living in the Frye family home there was only one possible candidate for who the boy could be and then I thought oh my God he’s a mixed race he is the exact age and he was a domestic and I said I found him his name was Eliza balisaire now that they had a name Katie could dig deeper using Louisiana property records which at the time included the enslaved there are 45 million
records here that date back to the 1730s okay so here it is sure enough Katie finds what she’s looking for belazair’s bill of sale at the age of six which brought him into the fry household in the French Quarter was sold with his mother Sally in 1828 Frederick Frye was a merchant and what I found was that belazair accompanied Frye on several voyages so clearly he was a domestic that was close to the head of the house and perhaps the caretaker of the children belizer was about 15 years old when he was painted in the portrait it’s a picture of domestic tranquility at odds with
the truth here he is seemingly valued as if he were a family member and yet could be sold away at any time after Frederick fry died corally sold bellazair to Evergreen Plantation it was Christmas Eve 1856. [Music] and sometime after he was sold someone had him painted out it was covered up with lighter colors to match the skyline Craig found remnants of that Skyline in the crackular pattern they became Clues to solve the mystery of when belazair was covered up over time paintings expand and contract creating cracks it would have taken 50 years or so to have this level of cracking the cover-up is visible
within the crackular patterns that would give me the impression that the cover-up happened around the turn of the century turn of the century New Orleans you’re talking about a world that had created Jim Crow laws to separate the races to make it very clear that the two did not belong together whether it was corally or one of her descendants I don’t know documents show belizer was enslaved at Evergreen up until 1861. the year the Civil War began did he survive and live long enough to experience Freedom we don’t know because the trail stops but we know his name and we know about his journey I
think that’s incredible my plans to find a permanent home for it the painting has to end up somewhere where it can be seen in the spring of 2023 a dealer who represented Jeremy called a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to tell her about the painting I was completely drawn and taken in by the story in the past we weren’t asking all the right questions we weren’t looking for depictions of enslaved people in a more naturalistic way as an actual portrait of a person because we didn’t think they existed I’d never seen one they’re incredibly rare the dealer included a report with all the
work Jeremy had initiated the name of the artist Katie’s research on belizer’s life and Craig’s conservation report that made it possible for us to move forward and so the museum acquired the painting for its permanent collection for an undisclosed sum I’m afraid to say that far too many pieces have been de-assessions or not taken in by these museums and we’ve lost a lot as a result of this sort of negligence I can’t say how many works there are like the painting of Bella’s air but I think that everybody should start looking at storage