Traite des Nègres (The Slave Trade)

Art Historical Context

**Traite des Nè (The Slave Trade)**, a striking early 19th-century-printed cotton textile, measures an impressive 101 × inches, designed for use as a decorative hanging or furnishing fabric. Created in French Alsace—a hub of innovative textile production—this piece credits British artist George Morland, for his vivid rural and genre scenes; engraver John Raphael Smith; and local printer Frédéric Etienne Joseph Feldtrappe. imagery, evoking scenes of men, women, animals, and houses, poignantly captures the brutal realities of the transatlantic slave trade, a topic of growing abolitionist fervor during this era. Roller printing, a revolutionary mechanized technique emerging in the late 18th century, enabled vibrant, repeatable patterns on cotton at scale, transforming textiles from elite luxuries into accessible home decorations. Produced in Alsace, renowned for its "indienne" printed fabrics inspired by exotic motifs, this work blends narrative storytelling with commercial craft, reflecting Europe's shifting moral consciousness as nations like Britain (1807) and France (1818) moved to end the trade. Today, housed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department (Rogers Fund, 1926), *Traite des Nègres* invites reflection on art's power to confront history, merging aesthetic beauty with unflinching social commentary.

About the Artist

George Morland|John Raphael Smith|Frédéric Etienne Joseph Feldtrappe · 1763–1804

English painter, son of the pastel portraitist, dealer and restorer Henry Robert Morland and the grandson of the genre painter George Henry Morland. Comment on works: Landscapes; Genre; Animals; Marines