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Hercules Subdued: The Visual Rhetoricof the Kneeling SlaveCynthia S. HamiltonPublished online: 06 Dec 2012.

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Hercules Subdued: The VisualRhetoric of the Kneeling SlaveCynthia S. Hamilton

The image of the kneeling slave, designed for the seal of the Society for Effecting the

Abolition of the Slave Trade, then widely distributed as a cameo manufactured and dis-

tributed by Josiah Wedgwood became a powerful abolitionist icon. The image has been

seen as both one of victimization and one that acknowledges the agency of the slave.

While the former interpretation is understandable given the re-configurations of the

image within the polemics of the Abolitionist campaign of the nineteenth century, the

original image needs to be examined within the context of its construction. For this, it

is necessary to explore the classical nature of the figure, particularly the representations

and mythic significance of Hercules. These associations are combined with references to

supplication as depicted in earlier token books, religious iconography, contemporary trea-

tises on acting, eighteenth century treatises on gesture and rhetoric, and eighteenth century

treatises on phrenology, physiognomy and ethnology. It is the complexity derived from

such blending that became simplified and limited in later re-presentations where the

image is used in conjunction with sentimental appeals to the benevolence of the viewer.

As the classical resonances gave way to sentimental imperatives, the changing array of

discourses changed not only the context which gave the image meaning, but reshaped

the very image of the kneeling slave in subtle, but significant ways. The result provides

us with a complex study of the dynamics of visual rhetoric.

Thomas Clarkson’s The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abol-

ition of the African Slave-Trade (1808) credits Josiah Wedgwood with playing an

instrumental role in shifting popular sentiments towards abolition. Wedgwood’s

financial support for the campaign was not inconsiderable, but his most significant

contribution was undoubtedly the now iconic image of the kneeling slave.1 Exact attri-

bution of the original design is uncertain, for it was presented to the London Commit-

tee on 16 October 1787 by a sub-committee charged with designing a seal for the

Slavery & Abolition, 2013Vol. 34, No. 4, 631–652, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2012.746580

Correspondence to: Cynthia S. Hamilton is Head of the Department of English and Associate Professor at

Liverpool Hope University, Hope Park, Liverpool L16 9JD, UK. Email: [email protected]

# 2013 Taylor & Francis

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Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade.2 An image of the seal is inserted

in Clarkson’s History along with its description:

An African was seen (as in Figure 1) in chains in a supplicating posture, kneelingwith one knee upon the ground, with both his hands lifted up to Heaven, andround the seal was observed the following motto, as if he was uttering the wordshimself, ‘Am I not a Man and a Brother?’3

Once approved by the Society, the design was modelled by William Hackwood for

mass-production at Wedgwood’s Etruria factory. Both jasper cameos and intaglios

were produced and distributed at Wedgwood’s expense; they were also sold. It was

these cameos that became the sought after fashion accessories of which Clarkson

remarked, that fashion ‘was seen for once in the honourable office of promoting the

cause of justice, humanity, and freedom’.4 Wedgwood’s slave cameos were inlaid in

gold on snuff boxes, turned into pendants and used to adorn bracelets and hair

Figure 1. Hackwood’s original sketch for the kneeling slave medallion. Reproduced withthe kind permission of the Wedgwood Museum.

632 Cynthia S. Hamilton

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pins. Though it is not possible to say exactly how many were produced, it is reasonable

to suggest that thousands were made and circulated.5 Clarkson noted that he had

received some 500 such medallions for distribution.6 A number of requests for the

cameos and seals can be found among Wedgwood’s orders for 1788, indicating the

rapidity with which they became popular.7

It was not long before both the seal and Wedgwood’s cameos made their way to the

USA. In February 1788, Wedgwood sent a number to Benjamin Franklin, then Presi-

dent of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery.8 In November

1788, the New Haven Gazette notified the public that the ‘Society for the Abolition of

the Slave Trade have the following device for their seal – A Negro naked, bound in

fetters, and kneeling in a suppliant posture – the motto, Am I Not a Man and a

Brother!’9 The speed with which the image made its way to America is indicative of

the close ties quickly established, and continuing between reform communities in

the USA, Ireland and the UK.

In 1830, the Genius of Universal Emancipation carried information about the activi-

ties of the Ladies Anti-Slavery Societies in England and Ireland and noted the receipt of

a ‘variety of fancy articles, such as seals, portfolios, albums, workbags, inkstands,

workboxes, &c. [that] have been “adapted to anti-slavery purposes” and made use

of for awakening the public attention’. The image on the seal was that of a kneeling

slave, above whose head appeared the question, ‘Am I Not a Woman and a Sister?’10

As the Anti-slavery movement grew in the USA during the antebellum period, the

image of the kneeling slave became even more pervasive, adorning fire screens,

needle bags, plates, stationary, the masthead of The Liberator and numerous broad-

sheets.11 The resulting commodification of the slave’s image as a protest against the

commodification of his human counterpart is not, of course, without irony.

Neil McKendrick has suggested that Wedgwood produced the antislavery medallion

for essentially the same commercial reasons that he issued other commemorative com-

modities. Mary Guyatt points out that while Wedgwood was personally committed to

the antislavery cause, he may not have been blind to the commercial benefits of adver-

tising his wares in this way or to the good publicity associated with his benevolent

stand.12 J.R. Oldfield’s contention that Wedgwood’s publicity strategies were in them-

selves of inestimable value to the campaign is more to the point.13 A fresh output of

cameos in 1792 was timed to coincide with the campaign for parliamentary legis-

lation.14 Wedgwood offered to pay for an illustration of the kneeling slave to adorn

the title page of Fox’s An Address to the People of Great Britain, on the Utility of Refrain-

ing from the Use of West India Sugar and Rum (1792). Requesting a costing for the

engraving of the print-block and a print run of 2000 copies, he closed his letter by

saying that the job ‘should be done immediately as this pamphlet may be of great

use in preparing the people here for petitioning’.15 Wedgwood’s entrepreneurial

acumen helped to ensure that the anti-slavery message had impact.

Wedgwood’s commitment to the cause should not be underestimated. His name is

among the subscribers to Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah

Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself (1789), and when

Equiano was about to depart for Bristol in 1793, he wrote to Wedgwood requesting

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assistance in procuring protection from possible harassment by press gangs.16 In 1793,

after the campaign had failed to secure the intended legislation, Wedgwood, while in

London, called on William Wilberforce to see for himself the evidence that had already

been presented to the Parliamentary committee on the slave trade.17 He wrote letters

to correspondents who requested information or expressed doubts, sending tracts and

arguing the case for abolition.18 And Wedgwood’s son Josiah was active in the aboli-

tionist movement well into the nineteenth century. In a letter to the younger Josiah

after his father’s death, Wilberforce referred to ‘the hereditary as well as personal

respect’ he entertained for the younger Josiah.19

Wedgwood’s cameo and the engraving of the slave-ship Brookes

The Wedgwood cameo is often read in conjunction with two contemporary visual rep-

resentations. Most often, it is seen as a counterpart to the famous engraving of the

middle decks of the Liverpool slave ship, the Brookes. Produced within a few years

of one another – the seal of the kneeling slave in 1787 and the copper engraving of

the slave ship in 1789 – both were commissioned by the London Committee of the

Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. In his important study of the visual

culture of anti-slavery, Blind Memory, Marcus Wood argues that both construct the

African slave as a passive victim so traumatized by the Middle Passage that the experi-

ence effectively destroyed the cultural memory and identity of the African. The result-

ing, covert celebration of white power produces, in Wood’s words, ‘the black as

cultural absentee, the black as a blank page for white guilt to inscribe’.20 Wood

makes a strong case for this reading with regard to the engraving and models of the

slave ship, but gives Wedgwood’s cameo only passing notice, and while he brilliantly

deconstructs the visual references for the slave ship, he does not pay the same attention

to the cameo. In The Horrible Gift of Freedom, Wood returns to the image of the kneel-

ing slave, but does not alter his interpretation of the politics of disempowerment

behind the image.21

The greater complexity and attendant ambiguity of the image of the kneeling slave is

indicated by readings of the image that ascribe greater agency to this figure. Kirk

Savage sees Wedgwood’s medallion as embodying an important shift towards

acknowledging the slave’s agency. This image, he suggests, invited sympathetic identi-

fication with a man ‘neither crushed by the weight of oppression, nor driven by it to

defiance’, prompting benevolent engagement in the slave’s cause.22 Jean Fagan Yellin

contrasts the muscular power of the figure with the vulnerability of the kneeling

female slave in later, more explicitly gendered iconography. ‘Though posed as a sup-

plicant’, Yellin notes pointing to the curled toes anticipating movement, ‘he is shown as

powerful and athletic; it is not impossible to imagine him bursting his fetters and

asserting his freedom’. The sculptor Thomas Ball, who drew on the image for his

‘Emancipation Group’, Yellin notes, saw Wedgwood’s slave as ‘“just rising from the

earth” and exerting his own strength to free himself ’.23 Thomas Clarkson suggests

that in the medallion, the slave is given a voice, ‘uttering the words himself – “Am I

not a Man and a Brother?”’24 More contemporary critics might see this as


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ventriloquizing. Nonetheless, the denial of agency implicit in such readings cannot be

accepted absolutely, nor should ascriptions of agency be seen as necessarily naı̈ve. A

striking instance suggesting the strength of will implicit in the kneeling slave is pro-

vided by Thomas Gray’s The Confessions of Nat Turner (1831). Turner, the leader of

an abortive slave rebellion, and one that had an unusually high death toll within the

white community, is described as he appears in ‘the condemned hole’ of prison.

Gray presents the man’s chained, bloodstained hands and fiend-like face in terms of

his capacity for action, seen here as monstrous:

The calm, deliberate composure with which he spoke of his late deeds and inten-tions, the expression of his fiend-like face when excited by enthusiasm, stillbearing the stains of the blood of helpless innocence about him; clothed with ragsand covered with chains; yet daring to raise his manacled hands to heaven, with aspirit soaring above the attributes of man; I looked on him and the blood curdledin my veins.25

Such a range of reactions suggest that the figure and the discourses on which it draws

deserve closer scrutiny.

The degree of agency ascribed to the kneeling slave has been questioned, but the

potency and effectiveness of this image have long been acknowledged. A letter to

the Printer of the London Diary or Woodfall’s Register dated 4 May 1789 complained

of the pamphlets, essays, prints and medals circulated in support of the abolitionist

cause which were ‘calculated more to work on the passions and prejudices of the mul-

titude, than to convince the reason of the few’. With reference to ‘poor stigmatized

planters and African Merchants’, the correspondent asked, ‘Are we not men and breth-

ren?’26 American abolitionists of the nineteenth century reported that visual images

caused widespread alarm among the supporters of slavery. ‘Pictorial representations

have ever been used with success’, the Fourth Annual Report of the New England

Anti-slavery Society noted in 1836. The general public, the report commented, ‘are

more immediately and thoroughly affected by a picture, than [by] a verbal descrip-

tion’.27 Benjamin Franklin responded to Wedgwood’s gift in a letter dated 15 May

1789, saying that he had been distributing the cameos among his friends ‘in whose

countenances I have seen such marks of being affected by contemplating the figure

of the supplicant (which is admirably executed) that I am persuaded it may have an

effect equal to that of the best written pamphlet in procuring favour to those afflicted

people’.28

The slave cameo and the hope medallion

A less fully explored pairing than that of the cameo and the engraving of the slave-ship

Brookes is that of the slave cameo with a medallion titled ‘Hope of Sydney Cove’. As

with the slave cameo, Wedgwood’s William Hackwood did the modelling for this

piece.29 The medallion of ‘Hope encouraging Art and Labour, under the influence

of Peace, to Pursue the Employments Necessary to give Security and Happiness to

an Infant Settlement’ was manufactured from clay sent by the naturalist Joseph


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Banks from the colony of transportees at Botany Bay.30 The design of the medallion

was taken from the title page of The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay

(1789).31 The juxtaposition of the two images was not without its ironies, of course,

as Deirdre Coleman has pointed out, particularly with regard to the comparisons

then being made between the forced transportation of convicts to Botany Bay and

the establishment of a colony at Sierra Leone for the repatriation of freed African

slaves, sending freed slaves to a location long associated with the depredations of Euro-

pean slave traders.32 Such a pairing also complicates the relationship between the

engraving of the slave ship and the Wedgwood cameo by introducing alternative ver-

sions of a middle passage.

The slave cameo and the Hope medallion were placed in conjunction visually

through paired illustrations on a single, otherwise blank page (between pages 86

and 87) in Part I, ‘The Economy of Vegetation’ (1791) of Erasmus Darwin’s long

poem The Botanic Garden (1789–1791). The Hope medallion is printed above the

slave cameo, is larger, has four figures instead of one and has a hint of landscape

rather than a plain background. In the Hope medallion, Hope holds the top of an

anchor in her left hand and holds out nourishment, a piece of fruit, in her right. A

cornucopia spills its contents at her feet. Peace carries an olive branch; Art, a painter’s

pallet. Both are female. The final figure of the group, standing at the back is male and

dark-skinned. He has a broad, muscular back and powerful legs. Unlike the females,

with their figure-shrouding draperies, the labourer’s body is visible. The kneeling

slave and the standing labourer face one another in symbolic dialogue. The colour

of their skin, their relative nakedness, and their muscularity effectively draw them

together as paired, contrasting figures (Figure 2). The text of the poem also places

them in relation:

Whether, O Friend of art! the gem you mouldRich with new taste, with antient virtue bold;Form the poor fetter’d SLAVE on bended kneeFrom Britain’s sons imploring to be free;Or with fair HOPE the brightening scenes improve,And cheer the dreary wastes at Sydney-cove;Or bid Mortality rejoice and mournO’er the fine forms on PORTLAND’S mystic urn. –

Here by fall’n columns and disjoin’d arcades,On mouldering stones, beneath deciduous shades,Sits HUMANKIND in hieroglyphic state,Serious, and pondering on their changeful state;33

These lines are clearly Darwin’s tribute to his good friend, Wedgwood, and a celebra-

tion of Wedgwood’s skill and ingenuity. Wedgwood’s achievement, as described here, is

placed beside that of the potters of ancient China and Greece, thus magnifying his

accomplishments and making him the beneficiary of an illustrious heritage. But the

lines also suggest the ‘changeful state’ of man, implying man’s mortality, certainly,


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with regard to the Portland Vase, the explicit referent for the last quoted lines. But the

structure of the preceding stanza – ‘whether’, ‘or’, ‘or’ – also suggests a wider applica-

bility. It suggests that man’s social condition is potentially mutable, that the kneeling

Figure 2. Proof-sheet illustrations of the kneeling slave and the Hope medallion fromErasmus Darwin’s The Botanic Garden. Reproduced with the kind permission of the Wedg-wood Museum.


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slave may become a standing labourer.34 Wedgwood was understandably flattered

when sent the poem in proof-sheets. After thanking Darwin, he commented that

the ‘slave cameo comes in so well and so extremely apropos where you have placed

it, that I should be sorry to have it removed, as I do not see how it can be so well

filled up by any other, especially considering it as a companion to the Hope of

Sydney Cove’.35

The kneeling slave and Hercules

In Wedgwood’s cameo and medallion, the graceful lines of the standing labourer and

kneeling slave, the clear musculature of their torsos and limbs, their tranquility of

expression and the folds of the drapery covering both figures’ loins suggest that

both draw on antique forms, as was Wedgwood’s practice. In a letter dated 28 June

1789, Wedgwood comments on his manner of treating subjects. ‘I only pretend to

have attempted to copy the fine antique forms’, he writes, ‘but not with absolute ser-

vility’. It was the style, ‘the elegant simplicity of the antique forms’ that guided him and

enabled him ‘to introduce all the variety’; this approach, the collector Sir William

Hamilton had assured him, was ‘the true way of copying the antique’.36 One gets an

insight into the way Wedgwood worked in notes in his commonplace books. In the

1787 catalogue, #74 is described as ‘Jupiter sitting in the middle of the zodiac, with

Mercury, Minerva, and Neptune; cornelian, king of France’s cabinet’.37 In his com-

monplace book, Wedgwood speculated ‘no. 74 Jupiter Olympius, with Mars,

Mercury and Neptune, will make one independent of the zodiac. The figures will like-

wise serve to accompany others, so as to compose subjects’.38 When doing so, it is clear

that Wedgwood was aware of the mythological significance of the figures, as his scho-

larly Account of the Barberini, Now Portland Vase with the Various Explications of Its Bas

Reliefs that Have Been Given by Different Authors (1788) demonstrates.

Conviction as to the importance and superiority of classic models was widespread.

Indeed, Winkelmann’s influential Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks

(trans. 1765), begins with the contention that taste ‘was not only original among the

Greeks, but seemed also quite peculiar to their country: it seldom went abroad without

loss’.39 Winkelmann comments that the ‘most eminent characteristic of the Greek

works is a noble simplicity and sedate grandeur in Gesture and expression’. He com-

pares the great souls that lie ‘sedate beneath the strife of passions in Greek figures’ to

the sea’s floor that ‘lies peaceful beneath a foaming surface’.40 George Ogle’s Antiquities

Explained (1737) is therefore typical in offering the art of antiquity as a model of grace-

ful design. ‘Their attitudes are always well observ’d; their positions well maintain’d; the

aspects of their figures pleasing; and their actions graceful’, he wrote.

Here [the artist] will find the true decorum of composition; where every single part,from the admirable disposition of the whole, preserves a distinct and proper char-acter. What choice of beautiful faces, what variety of perfect forms offer themselvesto his imitation; whether he consults for single figures, or groups of figures?

Antique gems, Ogle suggested, were a ‘store-house’ of representation.41


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The Greek models were not just aesthetically pleasing; they were also emblematic.

When discussing the bas relief of the Portland Vase, Wedgwood commented that he

was persuaded that the figures used by Greek artists ‘were for them a sort of writing

or language, the meaning of which was better understood in their time than it is in

ours’.42 In his opening ‘Apology’ to The Botanic Garden, Darwin comments that

‘[m]any of the important operations of Nature were shadowed or allegorized in the

heathen mythology’. The Egyptians, he suggests, used hieroglyphic paintings of men

and animals to record their insights and discoveries, ‘which after the discovery of

the alphabet were described and animated by the poets, and became first the deities

of Egypt, and afterwards of Greece and Rome’. Darwin therefore felt justified in

employing figures and fables ‘as represented by the poets, or preserved on the numer-

ous gems and medallions of antiquity’.43 In essence, he was doing in poetry what

Wedgwood had done in clay, using the antique imagery as a symbolic language for

his own expressive purposes.

Given the highly stylized and symbolically potent nature of classical imagery, the

question of what Wedgwood’s models for the kneeling slave might have been is an

important one. Fortunately, there is a relative scarcity of kneeling figures in Greek

and Roman art. George Richardson’s classically oriented Iconology, or a Collection of

Emblematical Figures does not represent either supplication or obedience through a

kneeling posture. Richardson describes his allegorical representation of supplication

as ‘characterised by the figure of a virgin crowned with laurel leaves’. The female

figure he describes ‘holds a basket full of fruits and flowers in her left hand, and

with the right she appears to be adorning an altar with fragrant flowers’. He explains

that he has taken this image from an antique medal.44

In Greek tableaux, figures stand with their legs either straight or bent; they repose, their

limbs at various angles; and they are seated, leaning back or forward. Few are placed

resting on one knee. Hercules is the exception, though even he is most commonly

depicted standing. In astronomy, however, Hercules has been known as ‘the kneeler’ or

‘the kneeling man’ since classical times and is associated with Engonasin.45 The classical

representations of Hercules provide an antecedent for the kneeling slave and a further link

between the Hope medallion and the slave cameo. Slave and labourer probably owe their

muscular strength, grace and serenity to Hercules. And it is likely that the slave is indebted

to Hercules for the curled toes that balance him between rest and action.

Hercules was associated with virtue and strength in adversity. The developed

muscles of the figure show that ‘he has been in continual labour and exercise’. His

12 labours are sometimes said to have been completed under compulsion, and to

have been designed to bring about his death. Not only does the myth of Hercules,

with his adversity and forced labour resonate with the situation of the slave, but the

appearance of Hercules is apposite as well. Although he is often depicted naked, kneel-

ing versions often cover his loins with a lion-skin in much the same position as the

drapery covering the labourer and kneeling slave. Hercules is described as powerful,

but restrained. His head sits upon a thick, brawny neck. His forehead is described

as fleshy and lofty. And his hair is seen as a defining feature, tight-curled and close

cropped. In Bell’s New Pantheon, the version recounted suggests that Hercules’s life


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was ‘made up of difficulties and hardships, from his birth to his exit’. As a result of

Juno’s jealousy and scheming, Hercules must serve Eurystheus who was given ‘the

power of imposing on him whatever labours he pleased for the purpose of effecting

his destruction’.46

If the kneeling slave is seen to resonate with the classical image of Hercules, the

racial politics of the image shift in interesting ways. The slave’s labours are no

longer a sign of debasement, but become a mark of his character, with such labour

patiently endured despite his strength and superior capabilities. Agency is built into

the very restraint of the muscles, the toes that remain curled and ready for action.

Specific sources for the labourer and slave can be suggested. The visual reference for

the Hope medallion would appear to be the Farnese Hercules, standing with one arm

and leg forward, a curled hand resting below the small of his back, the posture turning

and inclining his body slightly. In the Hope medallion, it is the right rather than the

left side that is forward, and instead of having the forward arm draped over the

support against which he leans, the arm is doubled to hold a hammer resting on his

shoulder.

The classical sources of the kneeling slave are more difficult to pinpoint. A common

depiction of the kneeling Hercules is to be found in maps of the constellations such as

John Flamsteed’s Atlas Coelestis (1729), where Hercules is depicted as a kneeling figure,

club in hand.47 Like Darwin and Wedgwood, Flamsteed had been a Fellow of the Royal

Society. Given the links between Darwin, Wedgwood and Flamsteed through Joseph

Wright of Derby and the Lunar Society as well as the close friendship between

Darwin and Wedgwood and their shared interest in science, it seems likely that Wedg-

wood would have been familiar with this book. One also finds illustrations of the

kneeling Hercules in George Ogle’s Antiquities Explained (1737): in one, he bends

his bow against the stymphalidae (Figure 34) and in another he is subdued by

Cupid (Figure 36), but the most striking precursor to the kneeling slave would

appear to be the figure of Hercules bearing Atlas’s burden of the heavens (Figure

35).48 Ogle suggests that this gem was the source of Carracci’s depiction of Hercules

in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome.49

Various depictions of Hercules were issued by Wedgwood on his ornamental jasper-

ware.50 In his 1787 catalogue, over 30 of the cameos featured Hercules. The figure was

placed on numerous seals, bas reliefs, medallions and statuary as well. Among the

cameos listed are ‘The Judgment of Hercules’, ‘Hercules Overcome by Love’, ‘Hercules

Supporting the World’ and a number of heads of the young Hercules.51 It is uncertain

that Wedgwood possessed a copy of Ogle’s book, but it seems likely that he did given

both his interest in antique gems and his penchant for book collecting.52

All the best artistic works which were issued from the presses of Rome, Florence,Venice, Bologna, Paris, Amsterdam and elsewhere, at the close of the seventeenthand during the first half of the eighteenth century, were purchased, and laidbefore his modellers. (Eliza Meteyard, Wedgwood’s first biographer comments)53

She notes that Wedgwood’s often repeated instructions to Bentley were, ‘Get books,

prints, models and all you require’.54


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The phrenology of the kneeling slave

Greek art was seen as capturing ‘brain-born’ images of ideal beauty.55 ‘The most beau-

tiful body of ours would perhaps be as much inferior to the most beautiful Greek one’,

Winkelmann writers, ‘as Iphicles was to his brother Hercules’.56 Petrus Camper built

on this conviction that classical sculpture represented the ideal body when he devel-

oped his concept of the facial angle. According to Camper’s treatise (tr. 1794), classical

sculpture derived its grace from a facial line of 100 degrees while the average Eur-

opean’s facial angle was 85 degrees; the African’s was calculated as being lower still.

Camper linked beauty, facial angle and mental superiority, implying an inherent

Figure 3. Stationary of the Anti-slavery Society used by the Hanley Shelton Association.Reproduced with the kind permission of the Wedgwood Museum.


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racial inferiority of those with features characterized as African.57 Camper’s ideas were

widely cited in the nineteenth century by ethnologists and phrenologists and were used

to help validate the scientific racism that was becoming respectable.58

In this context, the profile of the head of the kneeling slave carries as much signifi-

cance as his chains and posture. If one studies the physiognomy of the original sketch

and the cameo, the classic lines are clearly perceptible, especially when one looks at the

profile in the sketch. With regard to the cameo, there is a striking resemblance between

the head of the kneeling slave and the head of the young Hercules. The resemblance is

particularly striking in a carved gem from A Select Collection of Drawings from Curious

Antique Gems (1768) which exhibits the same thick, muscular neck, high forehead,

hair line and texture.59 The facial features of the sketch and cameo in profile – the flat-

tened nose and thick lips – give the slave a more racially specific identity, while the

straight, high forehead retains its classical planes.

Given such politically fraught territory, it is significant that some later represen-

tations, such as the image on the stationary of the British Antislavery Society, give

the slave a more caricatured set of African features, slighter musculature and a

hunched back (see Figure 3). The slave’s weight sits heavily on his shin, giving him

less potential to rise unassisted. Indeed, the curled toes appear to be resting sideways

rather than supporting his weight. The exotic landscape in which the figure is placed

helps to construct him as ‘other’. This is not an uncommon transformation. Nor is it

uncommon to find nineteenth-century images of the kneeling slave that change his

gender from male to female or that render the slave androgynous (see Figure 4).

Figure 4. An anti-slavery envelope. Reproduced with the kind permission of the Wedg-wood Museum.


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These images destabilize the complex associations of the original image and open the

figure to more sentimental readings.

The kneeling slave as supplicant

When commentators spoke of the kneeling slave as supplicant, they were reacting to

another set of visual cues built into the image. In addition to classical models, the

eighteenth century was heir to other visual languages wherein supplication was

widely referenced. Religious images of kneeling figures abounded, of course, but

there were also token books in which supplicant, kneeling figures were presented

within illustrations for moralizing narratives. The image on the frontispiece for Pia

Desideria: Or Divine Addresses (1690) contains a kneeling angel looking heavenward

in much the same posture as that of the kneeling slave, but with both knees on the

ground and hands flattened against one another in a more explicitly prayerful

manner.60 The hands of the kneeling figures in token books sometimes held objects

in their hands – a book, a heart – as they gazed heavenward, directing the reader’s

gaze to the importance of the object held aloft, just as the viewer’s eye is carried to

the manacles on the wrists of the kneeling slave.61 In the token books, both knees

are usually on the ground, however, giving these figures less potential for action.

The eighteenth century was provided with other sources for a visual language of

supplication, particularly in treatises on rhetoric and acting.62 In Chirologia: or the

Natural Language of the Hand (1644), Bulwer speaks of the stretching out of the

hands as ‘a natural expression or gesture wherein we are significantly importunate,

intreat, request, sue, solicite, beseech, and ask mercy and grace at the Hands of

others’.63 Clasped hands, with thumbs pointing upward, he comments ‘is an

expression importing a transcendency of praise’.64 Gilbert Austin’s later, influential

Chironomia: or, a Treatise on Rhetorical Delivery (1806) sought to establish a compre-

hensive system of notation for categorizing and recording rhetorical gestures. Though

Austin’s system was unique, his interest in interpreting the language of gesture was not.

The significance of the countenance, bearing, gestures and attitudes had been

discussed in treatises on art, acting and on physiognomy.65 Aaron Hill’s eighteenth-

century book, An Essay on the Art of Acting (1779), named 10 dramatic passions –

joy, grief, fear, anger, pity, scorn, hatred, jealousy, wonder and love. Hill described

the recognizable physical manifestations that characterized – and communicated –

the presence of each passion. The profile of the kneeling slave, raising his manacled

hands, his head thrown back so that his gaze looks up to heaven is a more extreme

version of Austin’s Figure 106, described thus: ‘Deprecation advances in an extended

position of the feet, approaching to kneeling, clasps the hands forcibly together, throws

back the head, sinking it between the shoulders, and looks earnestly up to the person

implored’.66 The kneeling slave also echoes Austin’s gesture representing ‘Mild

Resignation’.

This language of gesture continued to have currency in the nineteenth century. In

Henry Siddons’s Practical Illustrations of Rhetorical Gesture and Action (1822) we see

the relation of the kneeling slave to representations of ‘Devotion’ as well as to the


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posture of ‘Supplication’. ‘The stretching forth and clasping the hands, when we

importunately entreat, sue, beseech, or ask mercy’, Siddons explained ‘is the gesture

of supplication’. Siddon’s illustration of the posture associated with ‘Adoration’ is

also relevant.67 In the American edition of William Scott’s Lessons in Elocution

(1814), ‘Admiration’ is seen as a ‘mixed passion’ in which wonder is blended with

love or esteem. ‘The eyes are open wide’, Scott explains, ‘and now and then raised

toward heaven. The mouth is opened. The hands are lifted up’.68

Rhetorical theories of visual representation

Chirologia: or the Natural Language of the Hand (1644) recognizes gesture ‘as the only

speech and general language of Humane nature’ and sees the hand and the head as the

two ‘amphitheaters there are in the body, whereon most of these patheticall subtilties

are exhibited by Nature’.69 As William Cooke notes in The Elements of Dramatic Criti-

cism (1775), classical treatises on rhetoric, particularly those of Cicero and Quintillian,

treated the subject of gesture at length.70 The New Rhetoric of the Eighteenth Century

also saw gesture as an important component in effective communication. The ‘tone of

our voice, our looks, and gestures interpret our ideas and emotions no less than words

do’, Hugh Blair wrote in Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1790); ‘nay, the

impression they make on others, is frequently much stronger than any that words

can make’. The ‘expressive look or a passionate cry’, convey ideas more forcibly and

effectively than even ‘the most eloquent discourse’. For Blair, tone and gesture were

‘the language of nature’. ‘It is’, he said, ‘that method of interpreting our mind which

nature has dictated to all, and which is understood by all; whereas, words are only arbi-

trary conventional symbols of our ideas and, by consequence, must make a more feeble

impression’.71

Hugh Blair and George Campbell went beyond the classical rhetoricians by analys-

ing the psychological dynamics of communication and influence. In doing so, they

built on eighteenth-century enlightenment philosophy, particularly on the importance

of sympathy and the common moral sense that sympathy implied. To convince an

audience, Campbell argued in The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776), it was not enough

to produce logically constructed arguments that stimulated the understanding; the

speaker needed to influence the will. ‘To say that it is possible to persuade without

speaking to the passions’, George Campbell wrote, ‘is but, at best, a kind of specious

nonsense. The coolest reasoner always, in persuading, addresseth himself to the pas-

sions some way or other’.72

The theorists of the New Rhetoric devoted considerable attention to the question of

how emotion was to be excited. And as the phrenologists would later do, they assumed

a causal relationship between the presentation of specific types of objects and the pro-

duction of particular emotions. ‘To every emotion or passion’, Blair noted, ‘Nature has

adapted a set of corresponding objects; and, without setting these before the mind, it is

not in the power of any Orator to raise that emotion’.73 When defining the factors

involved in emotional engagement, they often chose pity and benevolence for their

examples. Campbell sought to identify the factors that heightened the reception of


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this emotion. He also noted the gratification that was derived from pity: ‘The very ben-

evolence or wish of contributing to [the sufferer’s] relief, affords an occupation to the

thoughts, which agreeably rouses them. It impels the mind to devise expedients by

which the unhappy person (if it is excited by some calamitous incident) may be, or

(if it is awaked by the art of the poet, the orator, or the historian) might have been,

relieved from his distress’.74 The pitying observers, he notes, can also indulge in the

self-congratulatory pleasure that attends their awareness of exercising humane

affections.75

Sentimental re-presentations of the kneeling slave

As the reproductions of the image of the kneeling slave multiplied, the image and its

significance shifted. The blank background of the cameo was filled with images of

exotic locations or with scenes that positioned the kneeling slave as victim. That

this re-presentation occurred is entirely predictable, for it conformed to the rhetorical

theories of eighteenth-century theorists such as Hugh Blair, George Campbell and

Lord Kames.76 Indeed, it is these later representations and readings of the kneeling

slave that help to justify Marcus Wood’s equation of this figure with the engraving

of the slave ship Brookes, destroying the balanced visual resonances of the original

and repositioning the kneeling slave as victim.77

William Cowper’s ‘The Negro’s Complaint’ (1788) provides a useful example of this

process, associated as the poem is with the figure of the kneeling slave.78 Cowper’s

poem, like the cameo, acknowledges oppression while upholding the dignity and

agency of the individual slave:

Men from England bought and sold me,Paid my price in paltry gold;

But, though theirs they have enroll’d me,Minds are never to be sold.

Still in thought as free as ever,What are England’s rights I ask

Me from my delights to sever?Me to torture, me to task?

Here mental freedom is contrasted with physical servitude. A justification for enslave-

ment is demanded by a rational individual who claims for himself equality and justice.

Interestingly, when an extract of Cowper’s poem was selected for the title page of Fox’s

An Address to the People of Great Britain, on the Utility of Refraining from the Use of West

India Sugar and Rum (1792), this balance was lost. When Wedgwood suggested the

inclusion of an image of the kneeling slave, he told Clarkson that this ‘pathetic figure’

would seem to utter the lines from Cowper’s poem.79 The words placed in the slave’s

mouth on the title page of Fox’s treatise are not a claim of equality but a lament:

Why did all-creating NatureMake the plant for which we toil?

Sighs must fan it, Tears must water,Sweat of ours must dress the Soil.80


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The selective use of Cowper’s poem is typical of the sacrifice of individual agency to

polemical impact in much subsequent anti-slavery literature. One thinks of Susannah

Watts’s ‘The Slave’s Address to British Ladies’ (1828), Margaret’s ‘The Kneeling Slave’

(1830) and perhaps most tellingly William Lloyd Garrison’s introduction to a Sonnet

of his own composition inspired by Wedgwood’s image. The introduction, ‘Sonnet’,

and commentary were published in the Liberator in 1834.81 ‘In order to keep my sym-

pathies from flagging’, Garrison wrote, ‘and to nourish my detestation of slavery by a

tangible though imperfect representation of it, I have placed on my mantel-piece the

figure of a slave (made of plaster) kneeling in a supplicant posture, and chained by the

ankles and wrists’.82 When a kneeling slave was displayed at the entrance of an Anti-

Slavery Fair in Maine in 1840, the words above his head were not ‘Am I Not a Man

and a Brother’, but ‘Let the Oppressed Go Free’.83

The sentimentalized, self-aggrandizing rhetorical strategies that helped to shape

later readings of the kneeling slave therefore need to be distinguished, if possible,

from the visual references of the original cameo. Originally, the image blended associ-

ations of nobility and strength in adversity with those of supplication and veneration.

The appeal made by the figure was both secular and pious, an appeal to both God and

to the observer. The question, ‘Am I Not a Man and a Brother?’ was asked not only in

the context of religious belief, but also within the liberal, humanist context of natural

rights. But as the polemical power of the image led to wide usage and re-presentation,

the slave and his utterance became a plea – for and of – a disempowered victim.

Within campaigns using recognized rhetorical strategies to engage a mass audience,

the kneeling slave was reconfigured as an object of pity and gratification that

enabled benevolent observers to affirm their own agency, to derive pleasure from

their relatively advantaged position and to congratulate themselves on their humane

instincts, in keeping with Campbell’s and Blair’s theories of effective rhetoric.

But the dynamics of these later images lose some of the very resonances and tensions

that gave the Wedgwood cameo the richness that rivets the gaze. It was the subtlety and

complexity of the visual cues encoded in this image that endowed it with a singular

teasing power. It is fitting to end by quoting Wedgwood’s lament for the lost knowl-

edge needed to read the classical language of Greek visual representation, for it res-

onates with our own position in relation to Wedgwood’s cameo:

In the compositions of the ancients, the actions of the figures being taken from thecharacter which they were supposed to have and which was marked by the particularforms assigned to their condition, the attitudes designed to represent those actionswere always dependent upon these forms: accordingly we cannot flatter ourselveswith having understood or explained an ancient monument ourselves until weare able to account for the attitudes and characters of the figures. The case is thesame with the accessories, none of them was taken at random, there is none ofthem that ought not to concur in making the subject understood, because thereis not one of them that was foreign to it, or that was not founded upon goodreasons. He who explains an ancient monument ought to give these reasons, asthey were conceived by him who composed it; when the explicator has set forththe reasons of the characters of the figures represented in a monument, thereasons of all the forms that are to be seen there, the reasons of all the attitudes


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and of all the accessories which it comprehends, he has resolved the problem; he hasexterminated the unknown by substituting known qualities. But we cannot lookupon a monument as explained, when the explication does not comprehend allthese conditions, when it is not founded upon these principles, when in fine any-thing remains to be understood; for then it does not include all the data of theproblem to be resolved.84

While fully capturing the intentions of the artist in either case is patently unrealizable,

it would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of the discourses that shaped

the reception of the kneeling slave. Not only did the creation of the image have a cor-

porate dimension, but the discourses brought into play could not be set at the point of

origin, as Wedgwood’s comment implies. And as the classical resonances gave way to

sentimental imperatives, the changing array of discourses changed not only the

context which gave the image meaning, but reshaped the very image of the kneeling

slave in subtle, but significant ways. The result provides us with a complex study of

the dynamics of visual rhetoric.

Acknowledgement

I am grateful to Judie Newman for her suggested addition of ‘Hercules Subdued’ to the

title. Images of the Slave Medallion have been provided by the Wedgwood Museum,

Barlaston, Staffordshire and appear in this essay with kind permission. Quotations

from the Wedgwood documents appear by permission of the Wedgwood Museum

Trust. The Wedgwood archive is a unique and extremely extensive collection of docu-

ments, pattern books, and a wealth of other manuscripts, which has been acknowl-

edged by UNESCO. The author, Dr. Cynthia S. Hamilton would like to express her

appreciation for help given by the Wedgwood Museum Staff at Barlaston.

Notes

[1] Donations of 30 guineas and £50 are acknowledged in letters dated 20 January 1792 and 30April 1794. Wedgwood Archives, 24740–32 and 24744–32. See also Eliza Meteyard, The Lifeof Josiah Wedgwood from His Private Correspondence and Family Papers, Vol. 2 (London:Hurst and Blackett, 1866), 565.

[2] See Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition ofthe African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament, Vol. 1 (Printed by R. Taylor and Co., Shoe-Lane, for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808), 450–1; J.R. Oldfield, Popular Politics andBritish Anti-Slavery: The Mobilisation of Public Opinion Against the Slave Trade, 1787–1807(London: Routledge, 1998), 156. Oldfield names the members of the sub-committee chargedwith designing a seal as Joseph Woods, Philip Sansom and Joseph Hooper. Mary Guyattsuggests that it was Henry Webber, the sculptor who was in charge of the Ornamental Depart-ment at Wedgwood from 1785 to 1806, who drafted the figure. She notes that Wedgwoodhimself may have taken a role in its design. She credits him with placing the words, ‘Am Inot a man and a brother’ around the figure of the slave. See Mary Guyatt, ‘The WedgwoodSlave Medallion: Values in Eighteenth-Century Design’, Journal of Design History 13, no. 2(2000): 93–105. Eliza Meteyard suggests that it was Wedgwood’s modeller, William Hackwoodwho designed and modelled the seal under Wedgwood’s own direction. See Meteyard, Life ofJosiah Wedgwood, 565.


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[3] Clarkson, History of the Rise, 450–1.[4] Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Vol. 2, 192.[5] Oldfield, Popular Politics, 156.[6] Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Vol 2, 191.[7] See order notes in Wedgwood archive, items 29455–143, 29024–142, 25780–129 and 11448–

65.[8] See Meteyard, Life of Josiah Wedgwood, 566. See Wedgwood Archive, 19080 and 19085.26. The

former item is a transcript of the letter by Meteyard. Requests were also received from agents inFrance and Germany.

[9] Historicus, ‘February 5, 1788’, The New Haven Gazzette, and the Connecticut Magazine,November 13, 1788, 3, 45.

[10] A. Lady, ‘The Reports, &c. from England’, part of ‘Ladies’ Repository. Philanthropy and Litera-ture’, Genius of Universal Emancipation 1, no. 3 (1830): 41.

[11] See, for example, Bernard F. Reilly, Jr., ‘The Art of the Antislavery Movement’, in Courage andConscience: Black and White Abolitionists in Boston, ed. Donald M. Jacobs (Bloomington: Pub-lished for the Boston Athenaeum by Indiana U.P., 1993), 47–73.

[12] See Neil McKendrick, ‘Josiah Wedgwood: An Eighteenth-Century Entrepreneur in Salesman-ship and Marketing Techniques’, The Economic History Review 12, no. 3 (1960): 422 andMary Guyatt, ‘The Wedgwood Slave Medallion: Values in Eighteenth-Century Design’,Journal of Design History 13, no. 2 (2000): 93–105.

[13] Oldfield, Popular Politics, 9, 155.[14] Ibid., 159.[15] Letter from Wedgwood to Clarkson dated 10 January 1792. Wedgwood Archive, 18990–26. A

letter to Wedgwood dated 25 July 1791 makes it clear that Wedgwood was trying to secure sugarfrom the East Indies. See item 19016.26.

[16] Letter from Equiano to Wedgwood dated 21 August 1793. Wedgwood Archive, 24058–31.Wedgwood did not respond until 19 September 1793, explaining that he had been awayfrom home. ‘I hope you will not be in any danger’, Wedgwood writes, suggesting that hecontact his partner in London, Mr Byerley ‘if it should be otherwise’. Wedgwood assuresEquiano that Mr Byerley will take the necessary steps to secure protection. Wedgwoodarchive 18983–26. A broadsheet advertisement soliciting subscriptions for Equiano’s Narrative,dated London, November 1788, and inscribed to Wedgwood in Equiano’s hand reads, ‘I prayyou to pardon this freedom I have taken in begging your favour or the appearance of your nameamongst others of my worthy friends and you will much oblige your humble servant tocommand’. See item 12632–74.

[17] Notes dated 7 and 19 April 1790. Wedgwood Archives 27771–36 and 27772–36.[18] Meteyard, Life of Josiah Wedgwood, 565 (letter in Wedgwood Archive to Anna Seward, Wedg-

wood Archive 18978.26).[19] The Hanley and Shelton Antislavery Society Cash Book indicates both his support and his

activities as an agent for the local society who went to London as their representative. Wedg-wood Archive, 24784A-32. Letter from Wiberforce to Josiah Wedgwood dated 8 June 1812,Wedgwood Archive, 27774–36.

[20] Marcus Wood, Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America, 1780–1865 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 22–3.

[21] Marcus Wood’s The Horrible Gift of Freedom: Atlantic Slavery and the Representation of Eman-cipation (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010) is, he explains, ‘an extended ironic appen-dix’ to Blind Memory, and indeed Wood continues to find the kneeling slave an image ofdisempowerment, a white celebration of benevolence embodying the usurpation of agencyby white sympathizers (see, for example, ix, 4, 19).

[22] Kirk Savage, Standing Soldier, Kneeling Slave: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth CenturyAmerica (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 21.


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[23] Jean Fagan Yellin, Women and Sisters: The Antislavery Feminists in American Culture (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1989), 8.

[24] Clarkson, History of the Rise, 450. An illustration of the seal is inset in the text of the page.[25] Thomas C. Gray, The Confessions of Nat Turner, the Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southamp-

ton, Va., as Fully and Voluntarily Made to Thomas R. Gray, in the Prison Where He Was Confined,and Acknowledged by Him to Be Such, When Read Before the Court of Southampton: With theCertificate, Under Seal of the Court Convened at Jerusalem, Nov. 5, 1831, for His Trial (Rich-mond: Thomas R. Gray, 1832), 19.

[26] Justinian, ‘To the Printer of the Diary. Slave Trade. Letter I’, Diary or Woodfall’s Register[London], 42 (May 16, 1789), n.p.

[27] Fourth Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, WithSome Account of the Annual Meeting, January 20, 1836 (Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1836), 20.

[28] Transcription of Franklin’s letter by Eliza Meteyard in the Wedgwood Archive, 19080–26. Yellinquotes this, but substitutes oppressed for afflicted, see Yellin, Women and Sisters, 7.

[29] See Wedgwood Archive, 1359.2, a receipt dated 8 September 1789 paid from Josiah Wedgwoodto Wm Hackwood ‘for finishing a Basso [of] the medal of Hope – Peace Labour and Arts 0–10–6’.

[30] Meteyard, Life of Josiah Wedgwood, 570. Metayard attributes both the design of the kneelingslave and the modelling of the Hope medallion to Henry Webber.

[31] Arthur Phillip, The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay; with an Account of the Establish-ment of the Colonies of Port Jackson and Norfolk Island Compiled from Authentic Papers from theSeveral Departments (London: John Stockdale, 1789). For this attribution, see DeirdreColeman, Maiden Voyages and Infant Colonies: Two Women’s Travel Narratives of the 1790s(London: Continuum, 1999), 11.

[32] Coleman, Maiden Voyages and Infant Colonies, 7–14.[33] Erasmus Darwin, ‘The Economy of Vegetation’, The Botanic Garden; A Poem, in Two Parts

(London: J. Johnson, 1791), Part I, Canto II, l. 311–24, p. 87–8.[34] Indeed, Darwin expands this thought later in the same canto, one devoted to chronicling the

formation of the earth, celebrating its mineral wealth, and suggesting a progression of humanachievements, including the progress of liberal humanism and freedom, as evidenced by theAmerican War for Independence, the French Revolution and the campaign to end slavery.This later mention places the kneeling slave in a more explicitly political context:

Hear, oh, BRITANNIA! Potent Queen of isles,On whom fair Art, and meek Religion smiles,Now AFRIC’s coasts thy craftier sons invadeWith murder, rapine, theft, – and call it Trade!– The SLAVE, in chains, on supplicating knee,Spreads his wide arms, and lifts his eyes to Thee;With hunger pale, with wounds and toil oppress’d,‘ARE WE NOT BRETHREN?’ sorrow choaks the rest; –– Air! Bear to heaven upon thy azure flood

Their innocent cries! – EARTH! cover not their blood!Darwin, Part I, Canto II, l. 421–30, p. 96–7.

[35] Letter from Wedgwood to Darwin dated July 1789, Wedgwood archive 19002–26.[36] Letter from Wedgwood to Erasmus Darwin dated 28 June 1789; Wedgwood Archive 19001–26.[37] Wedgwood 1787 catalogue, 6.[38] Commonplace Book 1, p. 327, Wedgwood Archive. Wedgwood makes direct reference to the

1787 catalogue here.


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[39] Johann Joachim Winkelmann, Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks: WithInstructions for the Connoisseur, and an Essay on Grace in Works of Art, trans. Henry Fusselli(London: Printed and sold by A. Millar, 1765), 2. Wedgwood references Winkelmann in hiscommonplace books. See Wedgwood archive 8410–39.

[40] Winkelmann, Reflections on the Painting, 30.[41] George Ogle, ‘Dedication’, in Antiquities Explained: Being a Collection of Figured Gems Illus-

trated by Similar Descriptions Taken from the Classics, Vol. 1 (London: Printed by James Betten-ham, for Cl. Du Bosc, 1737), viii–ix.

[42] Wedgwood commonplace book, see Wedgwood Archive, 8410–39, 25.[43] Darwin, Botanic Garden, vii–viii.[44] George Richardson [attributed to Cesare Ripa], Iconology; or, a Collection of Emblematical

Figures; Containing Four Hundred and Twenty-Four Remarkable Subjects, Moral and Instructive;in Which Are Displayed the Beauty of Virtue and Deformity of Vice. The Figures Are Engraved bythe Most Capital Artists, from Original Designs; with Explanations from Classical Authorities, Vol.1 (London: G. Scott, 1779), 98 (Figure 178).

[45] See Edward Phillips, A New World of English Words, or, a General Dictionary Containing theInterpretations of Such Hard Words as Are Derived from Other Languages . . .(London: printed by E. Tyler, for Nath. Brooke at the sign of the Angel in Cornhill, 1658):‘Engonasin (Greek) the name of one of the heavenly constellations, by which figure was rep-resented Hercules kneeling’. By 1720, the seventh edition was published. The explanation ofEngonasin had been expanded to explain the Hercules was ‘leaning on his Right Knee’. Onecan see the connections with Astronomy clearly in ‘Astronomical Geography. The Ancient Con-stellations’ in John Evans, A New Geographical Grammar; or, Companion and Guide Through theVarious Parts of the Known World, Vol. 1 (London: Albion Press, 1811) which lists: ‘Hercules, orEngonasin Hercules Kneeling’.

[46] John Bell, Bell’s New Pantheon, or, Historical Dictionary of the Gods, Demi-Gods, Heroes, andFabulous Personages of Antiquity: Also, of the Images and Idols Adored in the Pagan World:Together with Their Temples, Priests, Altars, Oracles, Fasts, Festivals, Games, &c. as well asDescriptions of Their Figures, Representations, and Symbols, Collected from Statues, Pictures,Coins, and Other Remains of the Ancients: The Whole Designed to Facilitate the Study of Mythol-ogy, History, Poetry, Painting, Statuary, Medals, &c. &c. and Compiled from the Best Authorities:Richly Embellished with Characteristic Prints, Vol. 1 (London: J. Bell at the British Library,1790), 383, 389, 392. See also Robert Graves, Section 122 ‘The Madness of Heracles’, TheGreek Myths, Vol. 2 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), 101.

[47] John Flamsteed, Atlas Coelestis (London: n.p., 1729).[48] Ogle, Antiquities Explained, n.p. [after 110].[49] Ogle, Plate XXXV, description, 112. Plate XXXVI also depicts Hercules kneeling on one knee,

but with a club raised. One Cupid is clinging to his shoulder, another is before him. This is arepresentation of Hercules subdued by love.

[50] For a discussion of Wedgwood’s use of the figure, see Arthur R. Luedders, Hercules in Wedg-wood’s World (The Wedgwood International Seminar, 1985). Luedders, a long time collectorof Wedgwood, specialized in depictions of Hercules. His pamphlet traces representations asillustrations for a notional biography of Hercules. Luedders mentions the image of ‘HerculesSupporting the World’ in passing, but does not provide an image. He does offer an illustrationof ‘Atlas transferring the World to the shoulders of Hercules’ by Tassie in white paste, see 29.James Tassie supplied models and moulds to Wedgwood, as Meteyard notes, see Life ofJosiah Wedgwood, 357. Luedders provides another illustration of a kneeling Hercules, that of‘Hercules killing a bull’, intaglio #332 from the 1779 Wedgwood Catalogue, see Luedders, Her-cules in Wedgwood’s World, 25.

[51] Josiah Wedgwood, F.R.S. and A.S. Potter to Her Majesty, and to His Royal Highness the Duke ofYork and Albany, Catalogue of Cameos, Intaglios, Medals, Bas-Reliefs, Busts and Small Statues;


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with a General Account of Tablets, Vases, Ecritories, and other Ornamental and Useful Articles.The Whole Formed in Different Kinds of Porcelain and Terra Cotta, Chiefly after the Antique,and the Finest Models of the Modern Artists, 6th ed. (Etruria: n.p., 1787).

[52] Only a small proportion of Josiah Wedgwood’s books remain at Wedgwood, and no inventoryhas been preserved.

[53] Meteyard, Life of Josiah Wedgwood, 602–3.[54] Ibid., 602.[55] Winkelmann, Reflections on the Painting, 4.[56] Ibid., 4.[57] Petrus Camper, The Works of the Late Professor Camper, on the Connexion Between the Science of

Anatomy and the Arts of Drawing, Painting, Statuary &c &c (London: C. Dilly, 1794), 42. Theimportance attached to the phrenological reading of silhouettes in the USA during the earlyrepublic is convincingly established by Christopher J. Lukasik, Discerning Characters: TheCulture of Appearance in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,2011), 25–54, 121–52.

[58] Cynthia S. Hamilton, ‘Am I Not a Man and a Brother?’: Phrenology and Anti-Slavery, Slaveryand Abolition 29, no. 2 (2008): 176–8.

[59] T. Worlidge, No. 2, ‘A Young Hercules’, A Select Collection of Drawings from Curious AntiqueGems; Most of them in the Possession of the Nobility and Gentry of this Kingdom; Etched Afterthe Manner of Rembrandt (London: Dryden Leach, 1768), description is on page 10, illustrationis on following unnumbered page. No record of this book having been in Wedgwood’s libraryexists, but as already indicated, while Wedgwood’s library was extensive, no records of its con-tents survive.

[60] Herman Hugo, Pia Desideria: or, Divine Addresses, In Three Books. Illustrated with XLVII CopperPlates, 2nd ed., trans. Edmund Arwaker (London: Henry Bonwicke, 1690). Kirk Savage notesthe connection between the seventeenth century token books and the image of the kneelingslave, but sees the token book images primarily in terms of depictions of suffering. SeeSavage, Standing Soldier, Kneeling Slave, 23.

[61] See Emblem 18, ‘The Giving of the Heart’, in The School of the Heart: or, The Heart of Itself goneaway from God Brought Back again to Him, and Instructed by Him. In 47 Emblems (London:Lodowick Lloyd, 1676) and emblem 23 ‘To Learning I a Love should have, Altho’ one footwere in the Grave’, in Choice Emblems, Divine and Moral, Antient and Modern; or Delightsfor the Ingenious, in above Fifty Select Emblems, Curiously Ingraven upon Copper-Plates(London: Edmund Parker, 1732).

[62] Kames’s Elements of Criticism (1762), Campbell’s The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776), Blair’s Lec-tures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783), and toward the end of the period, Whately’s Elementsof Rhetoric (1828).

[63] John Bulwer, Chirologia, or, The Naturall Language of the Hand Composed of the SpeakingMotions, and Discoursing Gestures Thereof: Whereunto Is Added Chironomia, The Art ofManuall Rhetoricke, Consisting of the Naturall Expressions, Digested by Art in the Hand, as theChiefest Instrument of Eloquence, by Historicall Manifesto’s Exemplified out of the AuthentiqueRegisters of Common Life and Civill Conversation: With Types, or Chyrograms, a Long-wish’dfor Illustration of This Argument (London: Tho. Harper, 1644), 11.

[64] Ibid., 161; see also diagram, 151.[65] See, for example, Johann Caspar Lavater, Essays on Physiognomy; Calculated to Extend the

Knowledge and the Love of Mankind. Written by the Rev. John Caspar Lavater, Citizen ofZurich. Translated from the last Paris Edition by the Rev. C. Moore, LLD. FRS. Illustrated bySeveral Hundred Engravings, Accurately Copied from the Originals, Vols. 1–4 (London: H.D.Symonds, 1797); Aaron Hill, ‘Essay on the Art of Acting’, in Works of the Late Aaron Hill,Esq.; in Four Volumes. Consisting of Letters on Various Subjects, and of Original Poems, Moraland Facetious. With an Essay of the Art of Acting, Vol. 4 (London: n.p., 1753); and Henry


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Siddons, Practical Illustrations of Rhetorical Gesture and Action; Adopted to the English Drama:From a Work on the Subject by M. Engle, Member of the Royal Academy of Berlin, 2nd ed.(London: Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1822).

[66] Gilbert Austin, Chironomia: or, ATreatise on Rhetorical Delivery: Comprehending Many Precepts,both Ancient and Modern, for the Proper Regulation of the Voice, the Countenance, and Gesture.Together with an Investigation of the Elements of Gesture, and a New Method for the NotationThereof; Illustrated by Many Figures (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1806), 489.

[67] Siddons, 81–2, 371, 389.[68] William Scott, ‘Elements of Gesture’, in Lessons in Elocution: or, a Selection of Pieces, in Prose and

Verse, for the Improvement of Youth in Reading and Speaking (Boston, Isaiah Thomas, 1814),38–9. See also ‘Veneration’, 36. The text was originally published in Edinburgh in the eight-eenth century, but without the essay on gesture, which was added to the American editions.

[69] Bulwer, Chirologia, or, The Naturall Language of the Hand, n.p.[70] William Cooke, The Elements of Dramatic Criticism. Containing an Analysis of the Stage under

the Following Heads, Tragedy, Tragi-Comedy, Comedy, Pantomime, and Farce. With a Sketch ofthe Education of the Greek and Roman Actors; Concluding with Some General Instructions for Suc-ceeding in the Art of Acting (London: G. Kearsly, 1775), 25–9.

[71] Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, 4th ed., Vol. 2 (London: A. Strahan, 1790),429. See also Blair’s comments on the importance of gesture and tone in the development ofprimitive languages in Vol. 1, 135, 138–9.

[72] George Campbell, The Philosophy of Rhetoric, Vol. 1 (London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1776),199.

[73] Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric, 415.[74] Campbell, Philosophy of Rhetoric, 328.[75] Ibid., 331.[76] In addition to Campbell and Blair, see Lord Henry Home Kames, Elements of Criticism, Vols.

1–3 (Edinburgh: A. Millar and A. Kincaid and J. Bell, 1762).[77] It is telling that in The Horrible Gift of Freedom, later images of the kneeling slave are conflated

with the earlier seal. See, for example, 59–61. See also Wood’s discussion of satiric transform-ations of the image, particularly in the nineteenth century, 78–89.

[78] Cowper’s poem quickly made its appearance in the USA. It was reprinted in The AmericanMuseum, or Universal Magazine 10, no. 3 (1791): 22–3 and much reprinted thereafter.

[79] Letter from Wedgwood to Thomas Clarkson dated 10 January 1792. Wedgwood archive18990–26.

[80] William Fox, An Address to the People of Great Britain, on the Propriety of Abstaining from WestIndia Sugar and Rum (London: M. Gurney, 1791).

[81] Susannah Watts, ‘The Slave’s Address to British Ladies’, The Sheffield Independent, and Yorkshireand Derbyshire Advertiser 453 (August, 1828), n.p.; Margaret, ‘The Kneeling Slave’, Genius ofUniversal Emancipation 1, no. 3 (1830): 44. Both poems enjoyed reprinting. See also the fateof George Moses Horton’s ‘The Slave’s Complaint’, Cynthia S. Hamilton, ‘Models of Agency:Frederick Douglass and ‘The Heroic Slave’, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society114, no. 1 (2005): 119–22.

[82] W.L.G., ‘The Kneeling Slave’, Liberator 4, no. 8 (1834): 31.[83] Anon, ‘Anti-Slavery Fair’, Liberator 10, no. 38 (1840): 150.[84] Wedgwood’s commonplace book, 26. Manuscript in Wedgwood Archive, item 8410–39.


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of the Kneeling Slave Hercules Subdued: The Visual Rhetoric and … · 2014. 8. 27. · Abolition of the Slave Trade, then widely distributed as a cameo manufactured and dis-