It all began with a painting — “A Family Portrait” by British artist William Hogarth, completed circa 1735. The focus of a docent training class at the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA), the “conversation piece,” or group portrait, depicts a refined English middle-class family taking part in that most English of traditions, tea.
What interested Cyra Levenson, associate curator of education at the YCBA, however, was not Hogarth’s English sitters, but rather a detail on the far left edge of the painting, almost lost in the blue silk folds of a gentleman’s coat. There, a pair of tiny brown hands appears, holding out a tea tray. The green livery suggests that they belong to a servant or a slave, but where, Levenson wondered, was the rest of the figure?
http://news.yale.edu/2014/11/02/bold-effort-illuminating-images-slavery-british-empire?utm_source=YNemail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ynalumni-11-04-14
