Samuel Daniell, Portrait of a Xhosa young woman ('Kaffer Girl')

Portrait of a Xhosa young woman ('Kaffer Girl'), 1820

Samuel Daniell (1775 - 1811)

RA Collection: Art

This title or caption of this object contains language that is upsetting and offensive. We have kept the original wording – given by the artist or creator – to preserve its historical significance and, where possible, we have tried to provide additional information to contextualise the object’s content, production and meaning in the society in which it was created.

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This image depicts a young woman from the Xhosa nation, a sub-group of the Bantu cultural and language group in South Africa. This etching is an illustration for a book titled Sketches representing the Native Tribes, Animals and Scenery of Southern Africa (1820), originally drawn by Samuel Daniell and published by his brother William Daniell RA. The book was part of a British colonial tradition of ethnographic and anthropological research. It demonstrates deep inherent racial prejudices and seeks to categorise indigenous groups into a Western-imposed knowledge structure. Samuel Daniell based this drawing on his encounters with indigenous people when he travelled to what is now South Africa between 1799 and 1802. This expedition was only possible due to colonisation of the land and peoples by Dutch and British forces.

The illustration is captioned ‘Kaffer’ which is an offensive term in English today. When this image was published in the early 19th century, the word was a colonial term used to describe Black people of southern Africa, who had their own distinct religious customs, specifically from the Xhosa nation. The term became increasingly pejorative from the mid-20th century, used as an offensive racial slur against Black Africans living in South Africa.

Object details

Title
Portrait of a Xhosa young woman ('Kaffer Girl')
Drawn by
Samuel Daniell (1775 - 1811)
Engraved by
William Daniell RA (1769 - 1837)
Published by
William Daniell RA (1769 - 1837) and Mrs William Wood (before 1837 - fl. 1898)
Contributor
Sir John Barrow (1764 - 1848) and Dr. William Somerville (1771 - 1860)
Printed by
Richard Taylor (1781 - 1858) and Arthur Taylor (1790 - 1870)
Dedicatee
Donor
William Daniell RA (1769 - 1837)
From
Sketches representing the Native Tribes, Animals and Scenery of Southern Africa, printed by Richard and Arthur Taylor [for] William Daniell and William Wood, (London: 1820), pl. 34
Date
1820
Object type
Plate
Place of Publication
London
Medium
Soft-ground etching on india paper
Dimensions

279 mm x 229 mm

Collection
Royal Academy of Arts
Object number
18/1591
This image is from a book

Sketches representing the native tribes, animals and scenery of Southern Africa / from drawings made by the late Mr. Samuel Daniell, engraved by William Daniell - London: 1820

Click here to view the book

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