Erasure Undone: Met Adds Enslaved Black Man's Portrait To Collection

UPPER EAST SIDE — A young enslaved Black man, erased from the painting that bears his name, will be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this fall, curators announced.

Once mounted, "Bélizaire and the Frey Children", a French neoclassical painting by Jacques Guillame Lucien Amans, will become the first naturalistic portrait of a Black person in the South to be displayed in the American Wing, said curator Sylvia Yount.

“The acquisition of this rare painting is transformative," Yount said. "[It's] a work that allows us to address many collection absences and asymmetries as we approach the 100th anniversary of the Wing’s founding in 2024.”

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The 1837 painting depicts Bélizaire, an enslaved Afro-Creole 15-year-old, as he stands above his three young charges, Elizabeth, Léontine, and Frederick Frey Jr., curators said.

Frederick Frey, a banker who lived on Royal Street in New Orleans's French Quarter, commissioned the painting.

Years later, a Frey descendant had Bélizaire painted out of it.

Elizabeth Kornhauser, Curator Emerita at The Met, notes Amans's ability to depict the divide enslavers created between children of different races.

"He revealed the nuanced racial tension of the time in the composition," Kornhauser said, "portraying fifteen-year-old Bélizaire lost in thought and subtly set apart from the children of his White enslaver.”

The painting will go on view in Gallery 756.