At Home in the Wild: Race, Power, and Domesticity in the Transatlantic Wallpapers of Zuber & Co.
Abstract
On July 24, 1833, French painter Jean-Julien Deltil (1791–1863) sent a letter to wallpaper manufacturer Jean Zuber (1773–1852) of Rixheim, Alsace. The two men were working on a new project together: wallpaper featuring landscapes of the United States, with which Zuber intended to bolster his company’s sales in the latter country. For this design, Deltil planned four scenes focused on New York, West Point, Boston and Niagara Falls. The descriptions of the scenes, which were to be composed of physical landmarks, forms of transport, and various groups of people, betray Deltil’s intention to use spaces and visual signifiers easily associable with the American continent from a European perspective, even if such designs implied taking liberties with geographic and scientific accuracy. Despite Deltil’s single written mention of Black figures, the actual designs also reveal the artist’s determination to use Black figures as props in his compositions. Engaged in social interactions, these characters appear in all four scenes, sometimes alongside Indigenous figures. The present article argues that these figures can be seen as an illustration of internalized ideas about race on both sides of the Euro-American Atlantic, which influenced the imagery of visual products like wallpaper.