Slaves Waiting For Sale with Maurie D. McInnis

Slaves Waiting For Sale

In 1853, Eyre Crowe, a young British artist, visited a slave auction in Richmond, Virginia. Harrowed by what he witnessed, he captured the scene in sketches that he would later develop into a series of illustrations and paintings, including the culminating painting, Slaves Waiting for Sale, Richmond, Virginia.

This innovative book uses Crowe’s paintings to explore the texture of the slave trade in Richmond, Charleston, and New Orleans, the evolving iconography of abolitionist art, and the role of visual culture in the transatlantic world of abolitionism. Tracing Crowe’s trajectory from Richmond across the American South and back to London—where his paintings were exhibited just a few weeks after the start of the Civil War—Maurie D. McInnis illuminates not only how his abolitionist art was inspired and made, but also how it influenced the international public’s grasp of slavery in America. With almost 140 illustrations, Slaves Waiting for Sale brings a fresh perspective to the American slave trade and abolitionism as we enter the sesquicentennial of the Civil War.

Maurie McInnis is  professor of Art History and American Studies at the University of Virginia and will begin as provost at the University of Texas at Austin on July 1. She is the author of several books about art and the politics of slavery, most recently Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade (2011). She also curated, “To Be Sold: Virginia and the American Slave Trade,” an exhibition at the Library of Virginia from Oct. 2014-May 2015.