Explore the The black child of this artwork.
The black child is another element that makes this piece unusual in Rossetti's paintings of the period. Prior to the 1990s, not much notice was taken of the black child other than as a colour contrast for aesthetic effect. But since 2000 the child has become the primary focus of academic discussion. The curator and writer Jan Marsh, claimed that the child "owes his presence in The Beloved to . . . current Abolitionist campaigning" taking place in the United States during the Civil War. The art historian Matthew Francis Rarey has disputed the idea that Rossetti intended to make a political statement, arguing instead that the painter included the child specifically in an effort to transcend politics, attempting a "figuration of Blackness independent of political implication or moral value."
Jan Marsh Civil War aesthetic