Dalmany

Auguste Edouart

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

On February 6, 1844, while in New Orleans, Frenchman Auguste Edouart cut this full-length profile of an enslaved woman, only known as Dalmany—a derivative of her owner’s name, Mr. Dalman. Peter Dalman was a captain of a steamboat ship named Da Soto, known to travel the Mississippi River, carrying, among other things, cotton picked from nearby plantations. Dalmany, as she is called here, wears a long, collared dress, and carries what appears to be a basket or hat, with ribbon ties in her left hand, and a kerchief over her short curls, all of which Edouart has taken care to outline and detail in white. On the back of the silhouette, written in beautiful handwriting, most likely by the artist, are the words, "Dalmany 18 years of age / Slave / born in Kentucky, belonging to Mr. Dalman / New Orealns 6th Febry. 1884." As scholars have noted, the erasure of enslaved people’s birth names and replacement with their new owners’ names was commonplace.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art