Rebecca Solomon’s The Young Teacher

The Young Teacher

Rebecca Solomon (1832–1886)

1861

Oil on canvas, in a gilded picture frame

195.5 x 173 cm

Private Collection

Tellingly, Victorian art critics argued that the tutor in the painting, assumed to be in charge of the children, is their intellectual inferior; they further suggested that the black character was the ‘recipient of the title’s teaching, rather than the teacher herself’ (Gerrish-Nunn 769). [Commentary continues below.]

Image © owner, courtesy of the Simeon Solomon Research Archive.

Commentary by Alex Round (see below), and formatting by Simon Cooke.

Astonishingly, then, these critics took it for granted that the white children possessed more intelligence or knowledge than the adult (black) woman. They made this point especially in relation to the subjects’ facial expressions and body language, which seemed for many to reveal a basic racial inequality. For example, The Critic’s reviewer regarded the girl as the teacher and noted the woman’s ‘semi-intelligent type of countenance’ (524).

Link to related material

Race and Ethnicity in Rebecca Solomon's The Young Teacher

Bibliography

Gerrish Nunn, P. ‘Rebecca Solomon’s “A Young Teacher.”’ The Burlington Magazine 130 (October 1988): 769–70.

‘Review.’The Critic 23 (1861).

Created 17 October 2021