Edward W. Clay and “Life in Philadelphia”
EDWARD W. CLAY and “LIFE IN PHILADELPHIA”
Few of the early visual artists of Philadelphia are better remembered than Edward W. Clay. His late 1820s print series entitled “Life in Philadelphia” grappled with who African Americans could be in the social world of antebellum America, a world that relied upon race and slavery as powerful signs of inequality. His answers were pointedly racist: in Philadelphia, those African Americans who took on the trappings of bourgeois urban life were overreaching and out of place. Clay’s critique came in the form of fourteen engraved plates, a series that was one part observation, one part artistry, one part imagination.
Clay’s work offered American audiences a cruel portrayal of black figures that uttered malapropisms, overdressed in clothing of exaggerated proportions, struck ungraceful poses, and thereby failed to measure up to the demands of freedom and citizenship. Blackness, as depicted by Clay, rendered his free black subjects misguided aspirants, always constrained by inassimilable difference. They might imitate middle-class manners and habits, but they always over-reached, or as one of Clay’s characters, a perspiring Miss Chloe, put it, “I aspire too much.” The early success of Clay’s images is attributable to his capacity to tap into the nation’s fears and fascinations with the problem of slavery and its abolition.
Edward Williams Clay (1799-1857)
“Life in Philadelphia (Going home from a tea-fight.)”
December 27, 1825
Watercolor, pen and black ink, 23 x 18 cm.
Note: Signed “EWC”
William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan
The theme of excessive fashion appears in early French satire and in this earliest known sketch of the “Life in Philadelphia” series. The colloquialism “tea-fight” referred to a tea party.
Edward Williams Clay (1799-1857)
[Life in Philadelphia] “Promenade in Washington Square.”
Ca. 1828
Etching, 17 x 20.5 cm.
William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan
“Life in Philadelphia” included white American figures. Here, an elaborately outfitted couple makes their way through the city’s Washington Square. The parody is quite muted, without the punctuation of dialect inflected text. We might wonder whether Clay knew this park to have been an eighteenth-century burial ground, particularly for Philadelphia’s African American community.
Edward Williams Clay (1799-1857)
“Life in Philadelphia. ‘How you find youself dis hot weader Miss Chloe?…’”
Ca. 1828
Etching, 17 x 20.5 cm.
William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan
Clay’s “Miss Chloe,” when commenting upon the hot weather, reports that she “aspire[s] too much,” and with this malapropism conveys Clay’s sense of free black Philadelphians as failing in their efforts to become bourgeois urban citizens.
Edward Williams Clay (1799-1857)
“Life in Philadelphia. ‘Shall I hab de honour to dance de next quadrille wid you, Miss Minta?…’”
Ca. 1828
Etching, 17 x 20.5 cm.
William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan
Clay’s original scene of “Miss Minta” and her suitor, “Mr. Cato,” which reappeared later in British editions and fine French wallpaper designs.
Edward Williams Clay (1799-1857)
“Life in Philadelphia. ‘What you tink of my new poke bonnett…?’”
Philadelphia: S. Hart, ca. 1830
Etching, hand colored, 21 x 18 cm.
Library Company of Philadelphia
Clay’s figures approached the questions of citizenship by way of their consumption of luxury goods, in this instance caricature’s ubiquitous poke bonnet.
