Many histories intersect in Ken Gonzales-Day’s Composition in Black and Brown (2024). This timeline highlights some events relevant to the artwork and its subjects.
1350–1521
The figure of a Mexica (formerly “Aztec”) nude male is sculpted in gray basalt. Although its original purpose is unknown, it may be a “standard-bearer” made to adorn the entrance to a temple.
1400s
Europeans first invade the inhabited lands now known as the Americas.
1441
Twelve West Africans are kidnapped by a pair of Portuguese explorers and given as gifts to Portugal’s Prince Henry the Navigator, an act that is now considered to mark the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade.
1492
The Indigenous people of Mexico, Central America, and South America are estimated to number 37 million.
1521
Following an eleven-week siege of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, the armies of Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and his Indigenous allies conquer the city, bringing an end to the Aztec Empire.
late 1600s
The beginning of the era of the Grand Tour, a weeks- or months-long journey through Europe undertaken by young upper-class men and women to give them an education in the sites and cultures of Western antiquity.
1650
After a century and a half of enslavement, slaughter, and disease spread by European colonists, the Indigenous populations of Mexico, Central America, and South America are now an estimated 9 million people.
1660
The Royal African Company is established in Great Britain. Although initially founded for the trading of West African gold, the RAC became one of the largest slave trading institutions in the history of the transatlantic slave trade.
1713
Per the Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession, Great Britain is granted the asientio, or contract, which gives them the exclusive right to convey enslaved Africans to the Spanish Americas.
1756
British sculptor Francis Harwood (1726/7–1783) opens a studio in Florence, Italy, that makes marble copies of classical portrait busts of figures such as Julius Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, and Sappho. Harwood’s clients are largely Grand Tourists eager to decorate their homes with these luxury objects.
ca. 1758
Harwood’s studio produces two known versions of a bust depicting a Black man whose identity is currently unknown. One is signed by Harwood and dated 1758, while the other is unsigned and undated.
1772
In a landmark legal case, Somerset v. Stewart, a British court of common law rules that James Somerset, an enslaved African man, cannot be forcibly transported from England to Jamaica to be sold. The court’s chief justice orders that Somerset be freed.
ca. 1776
British artist Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) paints The Portrait of Mai (Omai), which depicts the nineteen-year-old Polynesian man who traveled to England with Captain James Cook in order to seek support on behalf of Tahiti’s fight against the Bora-Borans. Mai became a celebrity among the British elite for being the first Indigenous person from the Pacific Islands to set foot in the British Isles.
1780
The transatlantic slave trade is at its height. It is estimated that from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, between 12 and 12.9 million Africans were kidnapped and sent overseas, not including people who died in transit.
1787
The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade is formed in Britain.
1807
Both the United States and Great Britain pass laws forbidding their citizens from participating in the international slave trade. The domestic sale and ownership of slaves remains legal in about half of US states.
1833
The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 provides for the abolition of slavery in most of the British Empire. The British government pays millions of pounds to slave owners to compensate them for their financial losses. No compensation is paid to the formerly enslaved.
ca. 1840
The era of the Grand Tour comes to an end due to declining interest in classical history and to the advent of railroad travel, which makes popular tourism possible.
1865
The unsigned version of Harwood’s bust is recorded in the collection of the descendants of Hugh Percy, the first Duke of Northumberland (1714–1786). It is likely that the duke himself commissioned Harwood.
In the United States, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolishes slavery.
1866
The American financier and philanthropist George Peabody (1795–1869) donates funds to establish the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University, at the suggestion of his nephew, Othniel Charles Marsh (1831–1899).
1876
The first Peabody Museum building opens.
1881
Marsh, now curator of the anthropology division at the Peabody Museum, purchases an “Idol of Stone” from Julius A. Skilton (1833–1897), a collector and former US consul in Mexico City. Soon after its acquisition, the sculpture is exhibited at the Peabody. Skilton believes the figure may depict a young boy.
1915
A pair of hands, thought to belong to the Mexica “Idol of Stone,” is found and given to the Peabody.
1961
The unsigned version of Bust of a Man is purchased by Wildenstein & Co., New York, from Weinmüller, Munich. It is referred to as Bust of a Negro.
1963
The “Idol of Stone” is featured in the exhibition From Mexico to Peru, curated by Michael D. Coe. The figure is titled Standing Male Nude, due to the determination that it is not, as previously believed, an adolescent figure.
1964
Artist Ken Gonzales-Day is born in Santa Clara, CA.
1966
Philanthropist and art collector Paul Mellon (1907–1999; Yale College, Class of 1929) promises his collection of British art to Yale and founds the institution that will become the Yale Center for British Art, the largest collection of British art outside of the United Kingdom.
1967
Paul Mellon acquires the unsigned version of Harwood’s bust, which may have been part of the Esterházy collection in Vienna. It is possible that Nikolaus II, Prince Esterházy (1765–1833), acquired this version in Italy, as he was a Grand Tourist and an important patron of neoclassical sculptors. The dealer’s invoice lists the work as The Blackmoor and attributes it to Italian artist Alessandro Vittoria (1525–1608).
1977
The Yale Center for British Art opens to the public.
1987
Christie’s auction house in London sells the signed version of Harwood’s bust to Cyril Humphries. At this time, it is referred to as Bust of a Negro, or Bust of a Blackman, and its sitter is misidentified. Some believe it is Psyche, an athlete who worked for Hugh Percy, the first Duke of Northumberland; others believe it is the boxer Bill Richmond (1763–1829). Both identifications are later proven incorrect. The work sells for £99,000.
From the appearance of the signed bust on the open market, Paul Mellon learns the true artist and approximate date of his version.
1988
The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles acquires the signed limestone version and catalogs it as Bust of a Black Man.
ca. 1990
The Getty retitles Harwood’s sculpture Bust of a Man.
2006
Paul Mellon’s unsigned version of Harwood’s Bust of a Man enters the YCBA collection.
2008
Gonzales-Day is a visiting scholar and artist in residence at the Getty Research Institute, where he photographs Bust of a Man in the Getty’s collection and begins his Profiled series.
2014
The YCBA features Bust of a Man at the center of its exhibition Figures of Empire: Slavery and Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain, co-curated by Esther Chadwick, Meredith Gamer, and Cyra Levenson.
2020
George Floyd is murdered in Minneapolis, MN, by a police officer. In response, millions of people in the US and around the world participate in Black Lives Matter protests.
2023
As a visiting artist at the YCBA, Gonzales-Day photographs portrait busts and other sculptures in the collections of both the Yale Peabody Museum and the YCBA, including Statue of a Young Man and Harwood’s Bust of a Man. The museums commission him to create a public artwork.
2024
As part of his Profiled series, for which he has photographed portrait busts in the collections of approximately forty museums worldwide, Gonzales-Day creates Composition in Black and Brown I and II. The first is displayed as a billboard on Interstate 95 North in West Haven, CT, where it is seen by thousands of people every day. The second is installed in the Lower Court windows of the YCBA.
