Details
Contributor Imbert, Anthony, 1794 or 5-1834.
Title Life in Philadelphia. "Is Miss Dinah at home?" [graphic].
Publisher [New York]: [publisher not identified]
Publisher N.Y. New York. 1830
Date [ca. 1830]
Physical Description 1 print: hand-colored lithograph; 21 x 14 cm (8 x 5.5 in.)
Description Racist caricature depicting a well-dressed, middle-class African American dandy, his right side toward the viewer, calling upon "Miss Dinah" on the outside of her basement apartment. He wears a black top hat, bright green waistcoat, tan pants, yellow gloves, and black slipper shoes adorned with bows. He holds a walking stick perpendicular to his thigh and a fob hangs away from his coat. An African American woman servant, wearing short-cropped hair and earrings, and attired in a red, short-sleeved dress and blue apron, stands at the open cellar doors and informs the suitor that Miss Dinah "is bery pertickly engaged in washing de dishes." She holds out a silver tray to collect the dandy's calling card. The dandy states that he is sorry that he "cant have the honour to pay [his] devours to her" and slightly crouches to place his card on the tray. The figures are portrayed with oversized and exaggerated features. Scene also shows an adjacent basement cellar with open doors and views of shuttered windows on the first floor to "Dinah's" residence and those adjoining
Notes Title from item.
Date inferred from content.
Inscribed: No. 5.
After the work of Edward W. Clay.
Probably printed and published by Anthony Imbert of New York.
Contains three lines of dialogue in the vernacular and dialect below the image: "Is Miss Dinah at home?""Yes sir but she bery pertickly engaged in washing de dishes.""Ah! I'm sorry I can't have the honour to pay my devours to her. Give her my card."
Shane White and Graham White's Stylin': African American Expressive Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), p. 108. (LCP Ii 4, A2880.O).
Nancy Reynolds Davison's E.W. Clay: American Political Caricaturist of the Jacksonian Era (PhD. diss., the University of Michigan, 1980), p. 88. (LCP Print Room Uz, A423.O)
Purchase 1968.
RVCDC
Description revised 2021.
Access points revised 2021.
Subject African Americans -- Caricatures and cartoons -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia.
African American women -- Caricatures and cartoons -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia.
African American women household employees -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia.
African Americans -- Clothing & dress -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia.
Courtship. -- 1820-1830.
Dwellings -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia.
Middle class -- Clothing & dress -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia.
Racism in popular culture.
Genre Caricatures -- 1830-1840.
Lithographs -- Hand-colored -- 1830-1840.
Location Library Company of Philadelphia| Print Department| Life in Philadelphia (New York Set) [7770.F.2]
Accession number 7770.F.2