The Mulatto Woman

This pastel portrait still hangs on my living room wall. It has been in my family since my father Bud created it in 1939, four years before I was born. It has always been known in the Myrdal clan as “The Mulatto Woman”. The painting has fascinated me from a very young age.

I must explain here that the world has changed, evolved if you like, and words have evolved with it. Even in the relatively short space of 80 some years we have become much more aware of people’s feelings and as such, some words are considered offensive and no longer used. The word mulatto falls into this category but it has fallen out of use; so far out of use in fact, that most people don’t even know what it means.

According to my Android Merriam Webster: mulatto

1 now sometimes offensive: the first-generation offspring of a black person and a white person

2 now sometimes offensive: a person of mixed white and black ancestry

First Known use

1591

History and Etymology

Spanish mulato, from mule/ from Latin mulus

Reading the etymology above it is not at all surprising that it is sometimes offensive today. In fact, it was probably very offensive in 1591 and without doubt was still offensive 1939 when my father painted this portrait, but few people cared at the time.

I sincerely apologize for any offence caused by using the word here. Nevertheless, I felt it was necessary, because the painting and its name are the focus for this whole blog.

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What struck me about this painting, even at a young age, was how sad and forlorn the woman seems to be. I never asked my dad about the session, but the painting says it all, or at least it does to me. If I may I would like to speculate on the sitter in this intriguing portrait.

I imagine that this poor woman is an outcast. Being “of colour” she was not accepted in White society but very sadly, because of her mixed-race background, she was not accepted by Black society either. This, according to my parents, was the fate of mixed-race people even as late as the 1940s.

With this in mind, I try to see more into the painting, and I believe I can see the actual person modelling for my 21-year-old dad in 1939.

She was poor and found it difficult to find work. It is likely that one of the few accessible types of work on offer to her was art school modelling. In the 1930s, God fearing America did not see exposing your body, even for art, as a respectable job, and few would have done it willingly.

She poses there quietly, breast exposed, just waiting for the session to be over. My father is a very accurate portrait painter, as is obvious from the many fine examples, in oil, of very recognizable members of our family, but getting the perfect result takes time in oil. The method here is different, he is using pastel chalk which is a very hands-on material. The marks are made quickly and with great skill. Up close, the marks look like nothing but from a foot or two away the few black scribbles morph into swirling curls and waves which perfectly represent her hair.

She is an experience model but is anxious to get home to her two small children, a boy, and a girl whom she has left in the care of her Irish mother in the small timber house they share in a poorer part of town. She doesn’t like leaving them too long and is careful to hold her position so that he has no need to reposition her and waste time.

Bud traces again the strong slope of her neck, bent forward from years of oppression, both social and physical. He is just tiding up now and deftly defines her right areola using slight, almost imperceptibly tiny marks with a small flesh coloured pastel.

I look again at her breasts. Perhaps I was wrong about the children. Her nipples look very young, even nubile. It seems unlikely that any baby has suckled these innocent mounds. Now that I look closer, her whole body is young. I had imagined, looking at her face, that she was in her late twenties, even mid-thirties, but her body doesn’t agree. Is it that she is in fact still a teenager, her face aged by a life much harder than any of us have had to lead? I look again, even more closely this time. Perhaps she is a teenager, given her racial statis, the hard life would not be so hard to understand.

Bud is nearly finished now, he rubs her right eyebrow with his little finger to smooth it slightly and satisfied, steps back for a final overall look.

“That’s all done” he says, “It has worked out really well, one of my best, I’m sure it will make my next exhibition.”

She pulls the wrap around her shoulders and covers her breasts as she steps down from the dais and moves toward him — they shake hands. My father was a well-known womanizer in his later years, and I doubt that began suddenly at the age of thirty-five. Nevertheless, I expect he behaved very professionally as an art student, and she collected her money, got dressed and left the building. I am unaware whether he knew her name, but the painting is now, and ever will be known as, “The Mulatto Woman”, unless the name itself becomes so objectionable that it can no longer be expressed by polite society.