Listen to Jesse R. Erickson, the Morgan’s Astor Curator of Printed Books and Bindings, read W.E.B. DuBois’s 1915 review of Watrous’s The Drop Sinister.
In 1914, when this painting was exhibited at the National Academy of Design in New York, viewers did not know what to make of the work. W. E. B. Du Bois commented in The Crisis that some of the crowd was mystified, but “another part pretended that they understood it. ‘It is miscegenation,’ they croaked.” Du Bois wrote, “the people in this picture are all ‘colored,’” and contemplated how the child would be marked “Negro” on the census. Speaking of her life, he continued, “90,000,000 of her neighbors, good Christian, noble, civilized people are going to insult her, seek to ruin her and slam the door of opportunity in her face the moment they discover ‘The Drop Sinister.’”
Harry Willson Watrous (1857–1940)
The Drop Sinister—What Shall We Do with It?, 1913
Oil on canvas
Portland Museum of Art, gift of the artist; 1919.18
Image courtesy Luc Demers
PHILIP: Harry Willson Watrous’s enigmatic painting caused much conversation and debate. In his 1915 review for The Crisis, the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, activist and writer W.E.B. DuBois dramatized the painting’s contemporary reception.
JESSE: When this striking picture was exhibited at the New York Academy of Design a year or so ago it attracted great attention. There was a crowd continually around it. A part of the crowd did not understand it. “What does it mean” they asked. Another part pretended that they understood it. “It is miscegenation,” they croaked. Lest, therefore, the crowd surrounding this page of The Crisis should misunderstand this message and The Crisis should figure again in Congress as daring to picture white and black folk together, we hasten to explain.
The people in this picture are all “colored”; that is to say the ancestors of all of them two or three generations ago numbered among them full-blooded Negroes. These “colored” folk married and brought to the world a little golden-haired child; today they pause for a moment and sit aghast when they think of this child’s future.
What is she? A Negro? No, she is “white.” But is she white? The United States Census says she is a “Negro.”
What earthly difference does it make what she is, so long as she grows up a good, true capable woman? But her chances for doing this are small!
Why?
Because 90,000,000 of her neighbors, good, Christian, noble, civilized people, are going to insult her, seek to ruin her and slam the door of opportunity in her face the moment they discover “The Drop Sinister.”