The painting is titled Dance Around the Liberty Tree. Could the Black man in the white turban at the foreground of this painting have experienced the same sense of freedom as the other revelers in Groningen’s Grote Markt in 1795? The men and women cheering the French occupiers as liberators from the old regime of the Prince of Oranje?
Dance Around the Liberty Tree on the Grote Markt, 1795, Johann Ludwig Hauck
On February 14, 1795, the revolution also reached Groningen. The old regime was replaced by a new government under the motto: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. A liberty tree was planted in the Grote Markt, a French flag waved from the Martinitoren, and on the far-right chimney, a chimney sweep played his violin. The painter Johann Ludwig Hauck, who happened to be in the city, captured this historic event in a painting later acquired by the city's administration.
We see a cheerful crowd, with a Black man at the center of the painting. Unfortunately, we no longer know who this person is. Was he a free man, a servant, or a descendant of enslaved people from the Americas? He is conversing with an officer, possibly one of the French occupiers. The French challenged and condemned the slave trade. The Dutch slave trade, however, was not officially abolished until much later, in 1863.
This is one of the few paintings in the museum's collection in which a Black person occupies a central place in a historical narrative. Much more often, we see inequality depicted, such as in portraits of Dutch nobility with their enslaved servants.
A guided tour in print
The Groninger Museum’s collection includes many artworks and objects related to slavery. This part of history has often been overlooked in Dutch historiography—and in the Groninger Museum as well. To address this, we provide historical context to artworks currently on display through a printed guided tour.
Pick up the free Legacy of Slavery: A Different Perspective tour at the museum's information desk.
Counter-narratives
Author Vamba Sherif contributed several Counter-Narratives for the Bitter Sweet Heritage initiative and the exhibition Black in Groningen. The Black individuals featured in the artworks in the exhibition remain unnamed. They were used as status symbols, reducing them to part of the backdrop and stripping away their identities. “We don’t know their stories, their struggles, or their dreams,” Sherif says. Yet, they were much more than "Black servants."
In the book Bitter Sweet Heritage, Sherif wrote a speculative "page from a diary." While fictional, these stories are based on historical facts, oral traditions, or old tales. This includes a story inspired by the painting Dance Around the Liberty Tree on the Grote Markt.
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