RACE | ART | WOMEN

How a Famous Black Model Finally Got Her Name Back

In 1800, when women were not respected as artists, Marie-Guillemine Benoist painted this controversial portrait of a “nameless” Black woman.

Marie-Guillemine Benoist, Portrait of Madeleine (formerly known as Portrait of a Negress) (detail), 1800

For more than two centuries, the woman in this famous portrait remained nameless. Although it may not look like it at first glance, this painting is a self-portrait.

Do not be confused by its original, demeaning title — Portrait of a Negress. Or by one of the headings under which it’s still listed in the Louvre Museum — Portrait d’une femme noire. This 19th-century painting by Marie-Guillemine Benoist is most assuredly a self-portrait.

It is also a paradox.

Because Benoist was a privileged white woman, the model was a Black woman whose status was uncertain at best and precarious at worst. Yet this painting is as much about the artist as it is about the subject.

In some ways, it’s very close to what philosopher Martin Buber called an I-Thou relationship in which the individual and the “other” are not separated by discrete (separate) bounds. Think of the word Namaste and you begin to get the sense of it.

Their identities were…