 One of the earliest versions of the "black as buffoon" can be seen in John Lewis Krimmel's "Quilting Frolic".The violinist in the 1813 painting, with his tattered and patched clothing, along with a bottle protruding from his coat pocket, appears to be an early model for Rice's Jim Crow character.Krimmel's representation of a "[s]habbily dressed" fiddler and serving girl with "toothy smile" and "oversized red lips" marks him as "...one of the first American artists to use physiognomical distortions as a basic element in the depiction of African Americans."