Modest Pride

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

General Description

Date: 1853

Scholarly Commentary

Introduction

Pen and ink sketch, present whereabouts unknown. The sketch is a good example of DGR's racist view of the world. The figure of “modest pride” is of course the boy who in shining the shoes of the black man represented as aloof and overdressed. See as well the closely related drawing Gentlemanly Confidence, executed about the same time, and DGR's Parody on Uncle Ned, which he did in two sketches and for which he wrote a racist poem.

All of these sketches were done in the wake of the phenomenal success of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin , which was published in 1852.

Electronic Archive Edition: 1
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