In:A Comparative Literary History of Modern Slavery: The Atlantic world and beyond
Edited by Madeleine Dobie, Mads Anders Baggesgaard and Karen-Margrethe Simonsen
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXVI] 2024
► pp. 50–75
Chapter 3Touching difference and colonial space
Niels P. Holbech’s Little Marie on Neky’s Arm
Published online: 12 December 2024
https://doi.org/10.1075/chlel.xxxvi.03bir
https://doi.org/10.1075/chlel.xxxvi.03bir
Abstract
This essay argues that Little Marie on Neky’s Arm (1838), a portrait by the Danish painter Niels
P. Holbech, provides a challenge to sentimental constructions of the West-Indian “nanny” figure. The relational ambiguity of this
painting recalls that of the wet nurse and her charge, a figure of nineteenth-century French painting described by Linda Nochlin (1988). In the context of the colonial imaginary, the nanny figure represented
fears of “miscegenation” while also acting as a foil to white European motherhood. Other Danish painters portrayed the nanny figure
against the backdrop of the external world. Holbech, however, foregrounds Neky and her charge, Marie by locating them in an
indeterminate space. Through its close attention to detail and difference, the painting lays bare the colonial ideology demarcating
near and far, nation and colony.
Keywords: portraiture, colonial visual culture, Danish West Indies, race, whiteness, miscegenation, affect
Article outline
- The emotional and geographical ‘place’ of the West Indian ‘Nanny’
- Wonder and doubt: Affective liminality and agency
- Tactility and maternity
- Blood, skin and racial science
- Conclusion: Displacing domesticity
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