Transcript
Speaker: Hello, and welcome to Curious Objects.
Speaker: In 1837, an enslaved teenage boy named Belazare was included in a painting of his white owner's children.
Speaker: This year is the 200th anniversary of his birth.
Speaker: Last time on Curious Objects, we tried to learn and understand what we could about Belazare's life, who this person was, and to the degree we can ever notice what kind of life he experienced.
Speaker: But everything we know about Belisere's life is just the beginning of the story of this painting.
Speaker: It's been 185 years since it was painted, and, well, it's been a long two centuries.
Speaker: The fact that it was rediscovered at all could be reasonably described as a miracle.
Speaker: For the Magazine Antiques, I'm Ben Miller.
Speaker: But luckily, we had some major breaks in finding information on that.
Speaker: What is completely shocking were a number of things that occurred that they weren't just
Speaker: They weren't coincidences.
Speaker: It's like they were meant to happen.
Speaker: I keep saying that, and I know it sounds foolish to sound superstitious, but the way these things happen, there's no way that's just happened.
Speaker: It's almost as if, you know, if I were a superstitious person from Louisiana, I would say the ancestors were guiding us.
Speaker: So, you know.
Speaker: Yeah, I know that feeling.
Speaker: You know, and it's the same thing I talked about earlier with kind of this law of attraction.
Speaker: I think if you set your mind to something and you really, it stays in your mind, I think, you know, I think things have a way of finding you and you find them.
Speaker: And sometimes you think you're finding them, but you find yourself in them.
Speaker: You know, I think that's one of the thrills of collecting.
Speaker: That's Jeremy Simeon.
Speaker: Spoiler alert, Jeremy is the current owner of this painting.
Speaker: That's how the story ends for now.
Speaker: But the story of how it wound its way to him is every bit as revealing of society, of history, as the story of Belisere himself.
Speaker: So let's go back to the beginning.
Speaker: to the French Quarter of New Orleans in 1837, to a prosperous slave-owning household, to the Frey family and its patriarch, Frederick Frey, to his children, Elizabeth, Lantine, and Frederick Jr., to the enslaved teenager named Belazare and his mother, Sally.
Speaker: Let's go back to the forest, the swamp, the bayou that makes the backdrop for this extraordinary painting.
Speaker: Let's go back to the morning.
Speaker: Or maybe it was an afternoon.
Speaker: Was it spring or summer?
Speaker: Let's say it was a cool spring morning.
Speaker: And there they are, the three Frey children and the boy without a surname, Belazer.
Speaker: The boy who, as a six-year-old, had been sold as property into this Frey family.
Speaker: who was described in that transaction matter-of-factly as Mulatto, whose father was... we don't know who.
Speaker: Did Belisar know?
Speaker: Did he suspect?
Speaker: Was it another enslaved man?
Speaker: Or was it a white man?
Speaker: Was it a friend of his mother's?
Speaker: Or an abuser?
Speaker: Was it Frederick Frey himself?
Speaker: Was that question in Belazaire's mind, that cool spring morning, as he stood alongside those other three children posing, taking directions from the artist, trying his best to stand still, struggling not to fidget, glad to be wearing that beautiful tan overcoat, even if it was a kind of uniform, mindful of what his owner, Frederick, had told him, that this was important.
Speaker: That this man wasn't just any artist, this was a great French painter, newly arrived in New Orleans, and that it was an honor to be painted by him.
Speaker: We've already spent an entire episode talking about this painting, and I haven't even told you yet who painted it.
Speaker: And how do we know it was painted in 1837, anyway?
Speaker: We do know that two of the Frey children died in 1837.
Speaker: But the painting itself isn't signed or dated.
Speaker: One artist whose name keeps coming up is a Frenchman, Jacques-Guillaume Lucien Amann.
Speaker: Here's Wendy Castanel.
Speaker: You heard from her last episode.
Speaker: I've heard that Jacques Amon might have been the artist.
Speaker: And if that is the case, then that would certainly be consistent with the quality of the work because he was trained in the French Academy.
Speaker: And so he has that kind of near classical cachet along with a lot of the other French immigrant painters who came to Louisiana during this period.
Speaker: I'm familiar with Louisiana portraits.
Speaker: Kind of an understatement.
Speaker: I know who was working at the time period.
Speaker: We have a very tight window.
Speaker: Amal arrived in Louisiana about 1836.
Speaker: That's when we start seeing his first signed works.
Speaker: Okay, we know that there's this period by 1837, two of the sitters could not be.
Speaker: Depicted, unless it was posthumous, and then I think we would see evidence if that were the case.
Speaker: So when we look at who's in Louisiana at that time period, and we consider the other artists, maybe a John Joseph Voduchamp, some people have said Franz Fleischbein, but it's not Franz Fleischbein, it's not John Joseph Voduchamp.
Speaker: You don't have to take my word for it.
Speaker: I can tell you have five Photoshop, which I love.
Speaker: And I would love for it to be by John Joseph Photoshop.
Speaker: He's the first painter I loved as far as Louisiana portraits.
Speaker: And it was the first ones I added to the collection.
Speaker: We bought two at auction.
Speaker: Franz Fleischbein, I would love for this to be number 28 of the known Franz Fleischbeins.
Speaker: And it would be so great.
Speaker: Franz Fleischbein could not paint this.
Speaker: He couldn't.
Speaker: He wouldn't have the ability to do this.
Speaker: When we look at certain aspects of the way the sitters are posed, I call this the suspended hand, especially Frederick Jr. It's a dead ringer for known Amon paintings.
Speaker: Okay, the pose of the little girl.
Speaker: That's another dead ringer of another painting of Amon.
Speaker: And some people say, well, it doesn't feel as finished as an Amon painting.
Speaker: Well, Amon worked from 1836 to 1856, and there's quite a bit of spread between that.
Speaker: And there's some inconsistency.
Speaker: In the early paintings, there's not as much modeling and glazing, and this falls right in there.
Speaker: But ignore all that.
Speaker: Let's just throw all that out.
Speaker: This guy thinks it's by Amon.
Speaker: The only other painting that descended in the family that was also donated at the same time is signed, Jacques Amon.
Speaker: I don't know, dear listener, if that's enough to persuade you, but I'm pretty well convinced.
Speaker: Hence the cool spring day in 1837 and Belazere listening to a Frenchman chiding him and the other children to arrête de bouger.
Speaker: One thing that's absolutely certain is that this is, by the standards of 19th century Louisiana portraiture,
Speaker: a fantastic painting.
Speaker: Jacquemont really knocked it out of the park.
Speaker: This portrait is amazing in terms of its skill and composition and the quality of the painting.
Speaker: It's clearly done by a formally trained artist.
Speaker: The proportions, the care of the clothes and facial features and the composition and arrangement itself, the combination of the landscape
Speaker: And the group portrait all marked this as being done by a highly skilled painter who has had a lot of experience with portraiture and with landscape and who has trained.
Speaker: It's not done by a limner.
Speaker: It is such good quality.
Speaker: From the moment Amand brushed his final brushstroke onto this canvas, up until 1972, the painting is a ghost.
Speaker: There are no records, no photographs, no catalogs, no probate documents.
Speaker: For 135 years, we're left to speculate.
Speaker: There are just two things we know for sure.
Speaker: First, it stayed in the family.
Speaker: When the painting did emerge in 1972, it was in the possession of Frederick Frey's great-great-granddaughter, Audrey Grasser.
Speaker: And second, at some point in that period, Bella's heir was erased.
Speaker: because the painting that emerged in 1972 was a portrait of the three Frey children and no one else.
Speaker: So the painting was donated to the New Orleans Museum of Art in 1972.
Speaker: And there was the Times-Picayune article, actually, that I would discover in 2022, or 2021, really, where the person who donated it, which was Mrs. Audrey Grasser,
Speaker: They wrote an article about a Mrs. Audrey Grasser donating two paintings to the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Speaker: One of them was the painting of the Frey children and Belisere.
Speaker: Of course, Belisere was covered up, though ghosting through.
Speaker: And the other was a portrait painting of a lady.
Speaker: who we've also figured out the identity of her.
Speaker: And in any event, the article talks about how these large... It essentially was kind of like one of these articles like, oh, these large paintings are so hard to fit in modern homes, 1970s homes, and museums are great places for these.
Speaker: And this is a perfect thing to do if you find yourself in this situation.
Speaker: But what was fascinating about the article is that they noted that there was a figure ghosting through, and Mrs. Grasser said that that was an enslaved person who was a playmate of the children.
Speaker: It's really interesting because she had no clue who the children were, but she remembered the story of an enslaved person being painted out after making the master upset.
Speaker: And they actually noted in the article that with conservation or restoration, this figure could be brought back into the composition.
Speaker: I want to pause here and just point out the irony that one of Audrey Grasser's ancestors had gone to great trouble to erase the memory of Belazare from this family portrait, only to have Audrey herself still talking about him in 1972.
Speaker: Of course, she had forgotten his name, or never knew it to begin with, but it's clear that Belazer never really left that family.
Speaker: That despite selling him off to Evergreen Plantation on Christmas Eve of 1856, despite defacing the masterpiece family heirloom by painting over him, they never quite managed to purge Belazer, even from their own memories.
Speaker: Now, at this point, you might be scratching your head.
Speaker: If this painting was donated to a major museum in 1972, 50 years ago, and a newspaper article at that time about that very donation mentioned the existence of a painted-over figure and the family story of an enslaved boy, how on earth did it take until last year for Belisere's story to come to light?
Speaker: That is a complicated question, and I think I want to get at it by working backwards.
Speaker: See, Jeremy's known about this painting for a long time.
Speaker: He'd seen references here and there, but it was just last year that he made a wildly serendipitous connection.
Speaker: It wouldn't be until the end of 2021.
Speaker: When I would get a huge break with this painting.
Speaker: I shared this painting multiple times.
Speaker: I shared it on more than one platform, Facebook, Instagram, talked about how amazing it was, you know, participated in all these forums on Louisiana history, and then on my private, you know, Instagram and Facebook, I shared this painting.
Speaker: And, you know, the reaction for most people was, wow, this is incredible.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Where is this?
Speaker: Where is this?
Speaker: I didn't I I wanted to know.
Speaker: And I just I didn't I had no way of finding out.
Speaker: Well, I shared it on Instagram.
Speaker: I think earlier in the year, 2021 or so, and I got a huge lead.
Speaker: A friend of mine said, oh, I remember that painting.
Speaker: I remember seeing it in a store like 10, 12 years ago.
Speaker: And I said, what?
Speaker: You saw this in a store 10 or 12 years ago?
Speaker: Yeah, in an antique shop.
Speaker: And I said, well, please tell me more.
Speaker: Tell me more.
Speaker: Now, I just want to state for the record that there are four words that are responsible for more breakthroughs in the world of antiques and art.
Speaker: than all the research that's ever been done those four words are i remember seeing that of all the paintings and sculptures and furniture and objects that you've looked at the ones you remember well there's probably a reason and there was definitely a reason to remember this one jeremy's friend who remembered seeing the painting
Speaker: You've actually heard him on Curious Objects before, too.
Speaker: He is a furniture dealer in Virginia named Taylor Thistlethwaite.
Speaker: So I first was exposed to Belazare in... I guess I was either in college or graduate school.
Speaker: It would have been...
Speaker: 2000 probably let's say the early 2000s early 2000 teens and the painting actually showed up at a shop in Georgetown that I've been going to my whole life.
Speaker: And it was one of those paintings when you saw it stuck with you.
Speaker: And, you know, my dad just had made a transition in his career and couldn't purchase the painting and he desperately wanted it.
Speaker: But because it was just such a powerful painting and, you know, it was something
Speaker: even in conversations with my family, that was always kind of, oh God, I wonder what happened to that painting.
Speaker: That was the one that got away and things like that.
Speaker: Was Bella's era
Speaker: still painted out at that point?
Speaker: No, he was not painted out at that point.
Speaker: He was in the painting.
Speaker: It had gone through an initial conservation that wasn't great, but it lets you know exactly, you know, Belazare was there.
Speaker: And I can tell you today, I walked in the shop and it was sitting over an Empire sideboard with a marble top and it just...
Speaker: I'm sure you have this story too, Ben.
Speaker: Whenever you see something, we look at thousands of objects all the time, but you always remember the ones that got away, and that was one that definitely got away.
Speaker: And the great thing about the painting was it just was such a commanding size, and it told really a great story.
Speaker: Fast forward a few years later, probably about two or three years ago, I'm sitting, you know, Jeremy, Sammy and I were actually friends on Instagram and we'd been in communication some, I wouldn't say we were big buddies or anything, but we became very, very close.
Speaker: And he posted that and I go, Oh, I remember seeing that painting in Georgetown.
Speaker: It, you know, it was the one that always got away.
Speaker: And, you know, I was able to tell him the dealer's name who had since left Georgetown.
Speaker: My heart's just pounding.
Speaker: Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Speaker: I'm like mistyping everything on Google.
Speaker: Thank God for autocorrect.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So it's so it brings up the shop and it's closed.
Speaker: It's it's closed, but it had actually moved.
Speaker: So I was able to do a couple of more, a couple, a couple of more searches.
Speaker: And I was able to find the guy.
Speaker: So, you know, me being impatient and, you know, we live in the world of now.
Speaker: Give me it.
Speaker: I want it delivered tomorrow through Amazon.
Speaker: I pick up the phone and I call.
Speaker: The guy doesn't answer, of course.
Speaker: So I sent several emails.
Speaker: I don't think he answered on the first, second or third email.
Speaker: But eventually I caught hold of him.
Speaker: And it was kind of like...
Speaker: Yeah, I saw that painting 10, 12 years ago.
Speaker: What about it?
Speaker: It's kind of like, well, I really want to know more about this painting.
Speaker: I have to know more about this painting.
Speaker: And he's like, look, I already sold the painting.
Speaker: I mean, look, I have some other paintings.
Speaker: Do you want to see other paintings?
Speaker: Do you want a mirror?
Speaker: We talked about everything from mirrors to paintings.
Speaker: And I was being polite, and he was being polite with his time.
Speaker: I said, look, I really need to know more about that painting.
Speaker: Who'd you sell it to?
Speaker: And he's like, look, that was a long time ago.
Speaker: I've moved twice since then.
Speaker: I said, well, can you please try to find something on it?
Speaker: Can you try to find something?
Speaker: who you sold to two records, I'll let you know.
Speaker: I was like, okay.
Speaker: It wasn't very convincing.
Speaker: But I checked in a couple of more times.
Speaker: I was persistent, but I was polite.
Speaker: And a couple months later, I was like, hey, did you ever find that paperwork?
Speaker: No, I didn't.
Speaker: What do you want?
Speaker: Do you want one of these paintings I have now?
Speaker: No, no, I don't.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: But please, if you find that paperwork, let me know.
Speaker: I mean, I wasn't sure this was going to happen.
Speaker: There was no certainty to this.
Speaker: And I try to maintain a level of optimism because I do believe in kind of the law of attraction when you're after something and thinking of something and you're persistent.
Speaker: I believe it can happen.
Speaker: But I didn't think it was going to happen like this.
Speaker: I think he called me on a Wednesday at 8 or 9 o'clock.
Speaker: And the baby had just gone to sleep and there was no way I was going to answer that phone call and make my wife mad and upset the baby.
Speaker: This would have been awful.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I let the phone in.
Speaker: I didn't realize it was him, honestly, so I just let it go.
Speaker: The next day, I wake up, probably at 5 o'clock or so, and I hear the message.
Speaker: He says, look, I found that paperwork.
Speaker: Give me a call.
Speaker: So naturally, I'm freaking out.
Speaker: I'm waiting.
Speaker: I call probably at 7 o'clock in the morning, impatient me.
Speaker: 8 o'clock, he doesn't answer.
Speaker: 9 o'clock, he doesn't answer.
Speaker: I'm compulsive.
Speaker: I kept calling.
Speaker: And I think I catch up with him a day or two later.
Speaker: I'm sure I'm having panic attacks over the next course of 48 and 72 hours.
Speaker: But eventually he tells me he found the paperwork.
Speaker: He went to know, well, so what are you after with this?
Speaker: I said, honestly, I just want to find out more about the painting.
Speaker: It's fascinated me since then.
Speaker: And he says, so who are you really, though?
Speaker: I mean, so I told you I collect paintings and this.
Speaker: And so I told him about me.
Speaker: I shared more about what I'm what I'm doing.
Speaker: I'm interested in representation.
Speaker: I'm interested in in material culture and paintings that show the the the presence of people of African descent in in the in this history.
Speaker: And so he said, OK, well, look, I'll reach out to the person.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: So the guy calls me and says, look, I've been in contact with that customer I sold it to.
Speaker: They still have the painting.
Speaker: I said, well, that's good.
Speaker: That's great news.
Speaker: Can I get pictures?
Speaker: This is really what I was after.
Speaker: I was after pictures.
Speaker: And this kind of turned into, well, are you interested in the painting?
Speaker: I said, well, I'm interested in learning more about it.
Speaker: Long story short, and really doing the Cliff Notes version of this,
Speaker: He was able to talk to the owner of the painting and the owner pretty much said to me, they never felt like they really owned this painting.
Speaker: They always felt like it was kind of waiting for,
Speaker: for something they said when they retired they were hoping to do the research on it um and uh i said well listen this painting has fascinated me since 2013. uh and i've been looking for it really really looking for it since 2015.
Speaker: And we were able to talk about that, and we came to a deal.
Speaker: They thought it belonged back in, I won't say permanently back in Louisiana, but certainly back south.
Speaker: It was way up north.
Speaker: It was in Washington, D.C.
Speaker: It was not even in the south.
Speaker: And so we were able to work an agreement out, and I called Taylor Thistleway to get.
Speaker: I said, Taylor, you never believe it.
Speaker: I found that painting.
Speaker: I need you to pick it up.
Speaker: And he said, what?
Speaker: He's like, are you at, what do you mean?
Speaker: I was like, look, it's in Washington, D.C., man.
Speaker: This is too big for UPS.
Speaker: I can't just, you know, I can't go up there and do that.
Speaker: I mean, you don't love so far.
Speaker: He said, well, you'll never believe this, but I'm actually going to be in Washington, D.C.
Speaker: on Wednesday.
Speaker: I said, well, that's awesome.
Speaker: Can you please help me?
Speaker: And Taylor is a great guy and has a passion for antiques and, of course, is a
Speaker: a dealer of Americana.
Speaker: And he said, yeah, I'll do it for you.
Speaker: Jeremy made all the transactions and everything, but I went and picked it up and for him.
Speaker: And it actually lived in my house for about a week or two until we could get shipping arranged.
Speaker: And, you know, it was kind of like seeing an old friend again, because it's, it was that one thing you always dreamed about.
Speaker: So after the painting, you know, I think I got it photographed for him and,
Speaker: He had a lady do an all-night drive from New Orleans back down to him.
Speaker: And that's kind of the whole story of my connection with it.
Speaker: It was more just going, you know, when you're chasing down these trails, you know,
Speaker: all it takes is one string that can kind of unravel the whole thing.
Speaker: So I didn't play a major role by any means, but I was able to really help kind of find the painting again.
Speaker: And the exciting thing was, you know,
Speaker: do I wish I owned the painting?
Speaker: Do I wish it was hanging in my house in Kentucky?
Speaker: A hundred percent, but it took a great scholar like Jeremy and you know, he's a hell of a bloodhound and he to trace it down because as somebody who,
Speaker: you know, constantly looks at paintings in great Americana.
Speaker: It just, it tells a story unlike really any painting that I know of in an American context, you know, it's especially from that period.
Speaker: So I kind of feel like I got a brownie for, you know, helping out to put this painting in the light where it should and deserves to be seen.
Speaker: Now, the thing about curious objects is, tracking them down is only the beginning.
Speaker: It was only after Jeremy brought the painting back to Louisiana that the real work started.
Speaker: Because remember, at that point, no one knew Belisere's name.
Speaker: No one even knew for sure that this was the Frey family in the painting.
Speaker: So Jeremy started sleuthing with the help of researcher Katie Shannon.
Speaker: I had started doing the genealogy before I contacted a researcher.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And I had come into this, just this, I could not get past this one person in the chart.
Speaker: And that's where I said, look, we got to figure this out because we did, we did know,
Speaker: who donated the painting.
Speaker: What we did not know is if this was a painting that he had acquired at auction five years before, or was this a family heirloom?
Speaker: So when I found the newspaper article that was dated, I believe 1972, that talks about the Grasser family donating these two paintings, that was the confirmation we needed.
Speaker: This did descend in their family in the maternal line.
Speaker: Here's some of the names.
Speaker: So along that process, Katie called me up one day and says, I really have a feeling it's this person.
Speaker: And I said, okay, well, what are your feelings based on?
Speaker: Well, there were very few domestics.
Speaker: Because this was urban slavery, the Frey family had very few domestic enslaved people.
Speaker: When I say very few, one is too many, but I'm trying to say this wasn't 50, this wasn't 20, this wasn't Versailles.
Speaker: We're talking about a handful.
Speaker: And then when we look at the gender and then we look at the age of
Speaker: could be only one person.
Speaker: No one else came close.
Speaker: So that's when the dominoes started to fall.
Speaker: When Jeremy started to understand who Belisere was and what kind of life he had led.
Speaker: The story we explored last episode.
Speaker: But there were still unanswered questions about those missing 135 years.
Speaker: Between that cool spring day with Belisere and the Frey Children and that time's picky interview with Audrey Grasser
Speaker: And there were even more unanswered questions about the 50 years since.
Speaker: And it seems like the answers to those questions might tell us a lot, not just about the painting, but the world it was passing through.
Speaker: Here's Wendy Castanel once more.
Speaker: Personally, I think that this portrait is...
Speaker: kind of a perfect encapsulation of everything that I love about Louisiana history and Louisiana race relations and Louisiana visual culture.
Speaker: And this portrait is a very beautiful example of Louisiana portraiture and the richness of Louisiana history and culture that is available for us if we peel back a few layers and continue to do the research and do a little bit of digging.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: The first layer that had to be peeled back on this painting was the paint itself.
Speaker: Because when the painting left the storage room of the New Orleans Museum of Art in 2004, and we're going to talk about that in just a minute, Belisere was still painted over.
Speaker: By the time Taylor Thistlethwaite came across it, one round of conservation had already cleaned up the painting and revealed the figure of Belisere.
Speaker: But after Jeremy acquired the piece, he sent it to a conservator named Craig Crawford for a second, more intensive restoration.
Speaker: So when the painting came in, it was clear that the person had done a very good job.
Speaker: In fact, I even reached out to the person.
Speaker: I spoke to them.
Speaker: And it was an earnest job and they did a good job, but they were very, very careful and conservative.
Speaker: And it was apparent to the eye.
Speaker: You could see old discolored varnish kind of haloing around his head.
Speaker: And you could also see where there was end painting blended with older kind of discolored varnish.
Speaker: So
Speaker: It was a risk to clean this painting, but Craig examined the painting several times.
Speaker: And he's somebody I trust.
Speaker: He's worked on a number of paintings and he's had great success with removing overpaint and even with bringing back pieces or elements to a composition that had been erased.
Speaker: So it was a leap of faith and trust, but I had no idea what was going to happen once Cleaney.
Speaker: I mean, really, literally, we had no idea if we were going to find the figure at, you know, 20% there, 30% there.
Speaker: What was your sort of, when you finally saw it unveiled, so to speak, what was your impression on?
Speaker: Well, so Craig and I have a pretty good relationship, and he knows I don't scare easy, so he actually kind of kept me in the loop as he was cleaning.
Speaker: So I did see it, you know, with overpaint removed.
Speaker: The biggest losses were in the hair, and that was something the last conservator had talked to me about and said that it appeared that that was done intentionally.
Speaker: That was, from what I understand, from her opinion.
Speaker: And so the biggest losses were in the hair, but the face was very much there.
Speaker: And when I first saw the face, I remember with my wife and child, we were eating lunch and it was a different person almost.
Speaker: It really looked like a different person, just so much more lifelike.
Speaker: So it was amazing.
Speaker: So finally, in 2021, that necessary restoration work was done.
Speaker: That was 17 years after leaving Noma's collection, and that was after spending 32 years in the collection, with Belazere still painted over entirely.
Speaker: Despite the fact that all the way back in 1972, when the painting was donated,
Speaker: The donor was talking about the enslaved person who had been erased from it, despite the fact that a newspaper article described how an obscured figure could be seen in the image.
Speaker: Nevertheless, in 2004, without having done any restoration work, the museum decided to sell Belazare.
Speaker: They sent the painting to Christie's.
Speaker: Now, for whatever reason, that didn't happen in 1972 after they were accepted in the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Speaker: It didn't happen in 1982, 92, 2002.
Speaker: It stayed in the basement.
Speaker: It was never displayed once.
Speaker: And this painting in 2004, they made a decision to sell a bunch of things for the reason of, guess what?
Speaker: So they de-accessioned this piece to acquire new pieces.
Speaker: And for whatever reason, the notes say, because I was able to, after being persistent, politely persistent as I was earlier, I was able to get the records from the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Speaker: That was not an easy task.
Speaker: I was able to get those records.
Speaker: And I believe the reason, and I'm loosely quoting, it said, no longer relevant.
Speaker: This piece was, for some reason, no longer relevant.
Speaker: So they decided to deaccession in 2004.
Speaker: And strangely enough, they did not sell it locally in Louisiana, but they shipped it to Christie's.
Speaker: And it was no reserve.
Speaker: And it was only two pieces.
Speaker: Two pieces they sold at Christie's.
Speaker: Very strange.
Speaker: I asked the museum about that deaccession because one of the fundamental questions about Belazer's memory is, okay, we can understand and grapple with why Frederick Frey's descendants might have wanted to erase it, but for over three decades, this painting sat in storage in a public museum whose curatorial staff was certainly aware, or certainly should have been aware, that an enslaved person had been painted out of this masterpiece.
Speaker: Now, I'm not saying it wouldn't have taken some effort to work out Belisere's identity and make all the connections that we know about now, but the fact that this highly important example of antebellum Louisiana portraiture was known to contain a covered-up figure, and that the curators and specialists at the museum turned a blind eye to it for 30 years.
Speaker: To me, that sounds like a loud ringing alarm bell.
Speaker: And why, after those 30 years, did the museum arrive at the decision to sell the painting without restoring it?
Speaker: I can tell you what the museum's representative told me in a statement.
Speaker: Quote, The painting was deaccessioned by NOMA in 2004.
Speaker: The process was part of a periodic review of the museum's holdings, which is common practice in the field, and followed the rigorous professional standards set by the Association of Art Museum Directors.
Speaker: That's not a whole lot to go on, to be honest.
Speaker: But it's been 20 years, and it's hard to say what the museum personnel were thinking.
Speaker: Maybe they were having trouble reckoning with the complex racial history the painting signifies, and thought it would be easier not to own it anymore.
Speaker: Or maybe they were focusing on their international collections and didn't have much interest in regional painting.
Speaker: Or maybe it just seemed like an old dusty picture and no one had bothered to try and figure it out.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I do know that in 2019, the museum exhibited a show called Inventing Acadia.
Speaker: By then, Jeremy had started looking into the history of the Belazare painting, but he hadn't yet located it.
Speaker: Now, according to the statement Noma gave me, quote, Noma attempted to identify the work's owner and location with the hope of including the work in Inventing Acadia as part of the exhibition's exploration of which stories are told and which are not within historical landscape painting.
Speaker: Despite extensive efforts, Noma was unable to find the work.
Speaker: While it was not possible to include the painting in Inventing Acadia, the museum published images of the work before and after restoration in the exhibition's catalog and in a text panel in the galleries that recounted its story as it was understood at the time.
Speaker: So if you would have asked me
Speaker: Before I acquired the painting, my opinion would be different.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But after everything, and after looking at the records, where they deaccessioned it, and after looking at the fact that they had an exhibit where they did mention this painting in 2018 in a book, and they must have pulled the record,
Speaker: I would believe that someone would pull the record that you have on the painting if you were going to include two full pages dedicated to it in an exhibit, right?
Speaker: So it's my opinion, for whatever reason, 2004...
Speaker: They saw this painting and they said, look, I don't know.
Speaker: They had to have read where it is because it mentions every it mentions even in the short form, you know, when they were sending it off to Christie's that there is a covered over figure.
Speaker: I mean, this is not you know, this was acknowledged and known.
Speaker: And it mentions in their file multiple times that this is an enslaved person.
Speaker: I mean, this is in their files.
Speaker: I have
Speaker: I should mention that for the better part of the year 2021, while Jeremy was neck deep in research about this painting, he was also sitting on the acquisitions board of NOMA.
Speaker: He resigned in October of that year amidst a dispute about this painting.
Speaker: I brought it to their attention in 2015.
Speaker: And then in 2018, I discussed it again.
Speaker: And then when the opportunity presented itself to acquire it in 2021, they acted very strange about it.
Speaker: I don't understand why they acted strange about it.
Speaker: It didn't make any sense to me.
Speaker: My brain was literally just like, why or what?
Speaker: This is what you've been waiting for.
Speaker: This is a monumental thing.
Speaker: You can write this wrong.
Speaker: OK, and, you know, there was excuses after excuse.
Speaker: Well, I got to talk to so and so.
Speaker: But, you know, they're on retreat.
Speaker: I'm like, well, do they have a cell phone?
Speaker: Can you call them?
Speaker: I'll try.
Speaker: And then there were phone calls.
Speaker: I kept calling and no one would respond.
Speaker: And that and all of this.
Speaker: Honestly, my opinion is they knew.
Speaker: They knew that this person had been covered over and they weren't ready to deal with that and didn't want to deal with that.
Speaker: But when I was able to acquire the painting, because they did not believe I would be able to probably because of the cost or maybe logistics or whatever else, they became very worried that I was going to tell the truth.
Speaker: And that's what I've been doing.
Speaker: And, you know, I didn't want it to be like this.
Speaker: I wanted them to acquire the painting and we'd all be smiling and talking about it and be in the New Orleans Museum of Art right now.
Speaker: That's what I was interested in.
Speaker: But they weren't ready for that, in my opinion.
Speaker: Now, I'm in no place to try to adjudicate this argument between Jeremy and Noma.
Speaker: I do think that something strange happened in 2004 when the museum sold the painting.
Speaker: And one could certainly imagine that Belazaire's race might have had something to do with that.
Speaker: That even 170 years after that cool spring day with Jacquemont and the Brooks Brothers' overcoat, and likely 100 years after being erased, Belazaire's presence was still posing a challenge.
Speaker: But even history as recent as 20 years ago isn't always so easy to figure out, and I don't have the receipts.
Speaker: I don't know who was part of that decision, and I don't know what was in their minds when they made it.
Speaker: For now, Belazere remains with Jeremy, although the painting is currently on loan for exhibition at the Ogden Museum in New Orleans.
Speaker: What the future holds for it is something that we're going to explore next week.
Speaker: But the truth is, much about its past is just as uncertain as its future.
Speaker: What is certain is that without Jeremy's years of sleuthing and without Taylor saying, I remember seeing that, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Speaker: And you'd be listening to a podcast about something completely different.
Speaker: You wouldn't have heard the name Belazare.
Speaker: But, indeed, you have been listening to Curious Objects from the magazine Antiques.
Speaker: This episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati.
Speaker: Social media and web support comes from Sarah Bellotta.
Speaker: Mateo Solis Prada is our digital media assistant.
Speaker: Our theme music is by Drap Rabbit.
Speaker: And I'm Ben Miller.
