2020/04/02 by Mia L. Bagneris · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Australian History and Society #Historical Art and Culture Studies #Travel Writing and Literature
paper · doi:10.1080/00043079.2020.1676133
openalex publication_date 2020/04/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Inspired by Hiram Powers’s successful Greek Slave, John Bell debuted The Octoroon at the 1868 Royal Academy exhibition. However, the mobilization of narrative that made Powers’s sculpture acceptable was not applicable for The Octoroon. Instead, racial difference made all the difference, prompting viewers to read the figure’s cold, white marble as hot, sensuous flesh. Bell’s sculpture reflects Victorian Britain’s fascination with the enslaved, American, mixed-race beauty and suggests provocative resonances between the antebellum South and the Orient in the popular imagination. The sculpture’s 1876 purchase by the cotton town of Blackburn also illuminates the octoroon’s significance as a trope in nineteenth-century British culture.