Mar 30, 2023 - Sale 2631

Sale 2631 - Lot 5

Price Realized: $ 20,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
(SLAVERY & ABOLITION.) Half-plate ambrotype portrait of an enslaved Virginia woman, possibly named Martha, with her owners. Ambrotype photograph, 5 1/2 x 4 inches, in original elaborate thermoplastic union case; some flaking of the black lacquered backing in the center of the image. [Virginia], circa 1859-1861
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Additional Details

We believe the standing woman is an enslaved woman named Martha.

This portrait depicts a seated older couple with a servant standing behind them. By provenance, we know that the seated man is Alexander Mundy (1796-1868) of the Airfield Plantation near Allen's Creek in Amherst County, Virginia. He is listed in the 1860 census as a prosperous farmer with $24,750 in assets. The seated woman would be his second wife Catherine White Mundy (1801-1882), who he married in 1844. That same year, Alexander inherited a share of his father's estate, including an enslaved woman named Martha and her two children, valued at $350. The slave schedule of the 1860 census shows only three adult women among the family's 33 enslaved people, aged 29, 30, and 38. Assuming that Martha remained with the Mundy family by that point, the 38-year-old woman on that list would be her--and quite possibly the woman standing behind Alexander and Catherine Mundy.

The union case, often known as "The Wedding Procession," was apparently based on an 1859 illustration from an edition of Longfellow's "Courtship of Miles Standish" (see Krainik 10). Photography supplies became quite scarce in Virginia early in the Civil War, so we expect this photograph was likely taken between 1859 and 1861. Provenance: consigned by the Mundy family to a Cowan's auction, 15 May 1999, lot 190, and thence to the consignor.