This document summarizes Anna Arabindan-Kesson's presentation on networks of labor representing cotton in 19th century America through artworks. It discusses various paintings, photographs, and installations depicting different stages of cotton production from planting and picking to processing in mills. Key works highlighted include Winslow Homer's "The Cotton Pickers", Edgar Degas' "Portraits in a New Orleans Cotton Office", and contemporary mixed media pieces addressing cotton's legacy. The presentation examines how visual culture shaped understandings of labor across the cotton industry in the US and Manchester.

2. Networks of Labour: Representing Cotton in
Nineteenth Century America
Anna Arabindan-Kesson
PhD Candidate, Yale University
Terra Foundation for American Art Predoctoral Fellow,
Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Whitworth Gallery, Cotton: Global Threads
April 26h, 2012

3. Lubaina Himid, (Detail) Cotton.Com, mixed
media installation, CUBE (Center for Urban
Built Environment) Gallery, Manchester
(2002)

4. “He said I looked like a painting by Murillo as I
carried water for the hoe gang, just because I
balanced the bucket on my head.”

5. T B Thorpe,
Cotton and Its
Cultivation,
Harpers New
Monthly
Magazine, Vol
8, #46, 1854,
447-463

6. Luther Terry, An Allegory of North and South, 1857, oil on canvas, Greenville County
Museum of Art

7. Luther Terry, An Allegory of North and South,
1857, oil on canvas, Greenville County
Museum of art
Edgar Degas, Portraits in
a New Orleans Cotton
Office, 1873, oil on
canvas, Musee Des
Beaux-Arts, Pau
Winslow Homer, The
Cotton Pickers, 1876,
oil on canvas, Los
Angeles County
Museum of Art

8. Anne Wilson, Walking the Warp, Manchester, (film
stills), mixed media and dance, Whitworth Art
Gallery, 2012
Lubaina Himid, (Detail) Leonardo Drew, Number 25, 1992, cotton
Cotton.Com, mixed media and wax, Rubell Family Collection
installation, CUBE (Center for
Urban Built Environment)
Gallery, Manchester (2002)

9. Luther Terry, An Allegory of North and South, 1857, oil on canvas, Greenville County
Museum of Art

10. Luther Terry, Jacob’s Dream, 1852, oil on canvas, New York
Historical Society

11. Luther Terry, An Allegory of North and South, 1857, oil on canvas, Greenville County
Museum of Art

12. Johann Friedrick Overbeck, Germania und
Italia, 1811-1828, oil on canvas, Neue
Pinakothek
Henry Hoff & William Hall. The Flag
of our Union, Sheet music, 1851,
lithograph, Library of Congress

13. Luther Terry, An Allegory of North and South, 1857, oil on canvas, Greenville County
Museum of Art

14. Merrimack Mill Corporation, Lowell, lithograph, nd, Kirk Doggett, Boots Cotton Mill, Lowell, 1850, drawing,
Lowell Historical Society Library of Congress
William Wyld, A View of Manchester
from Kersal Moor,
(Manchester from Higher
Broughton),1852, oil on canvas, Royal
Collection

15. Luther Terry, An Allegory of North and South, 1857, oil on canvas, Greenville County
Museum of Art

16. Edward Atkinson, The Cotton Kingdom,
1863

17. T B Thorpe,
Cotton and Its
Cultivation,
Harpers New
Monthly
Magazine, Vol 8,
#46, 1854, 447-
463
Charles Knight,” The History
of A Cotton Gown,” The
Penny Magazine, 1832,
1840

18. Commercial Statistics, Hunt’s
Merchant Magazine and
Commercial Review, Vol 5, 1841
p 471
Some Items of New Orleans’
Commerce, DeBow’s Review,
Vol 20,1855

19. James Richard Barfoot (1794-1863), The Progress of Cotton, Series of twelve lithograph with color, 1840, 34.5 x 49
cm, Yale University Art Gallery

20. Luther Terry, An Allegory of North and South, 1857, oil on canvas, Greenville County
Museum of Art

21. Slave cloth samples, Peace Dale Manufacturing Company
Collection, Baker Library, Harvard University

22. Weaving, 1869
"I weave, and weave, the livelong day:
The woof is strong, the warp is good:
I weave, to be my mother's stay;
I weave, to win my daily food :
But ever as I weave," saith she,
" The world of women haunteth me.
......
My sisters toil, with foreheads black ;
And water with their blood this root,
Whereof we gather bounteous fruit.
" I think of women sad and poor ;
Women who walk in garments soiled :
Their shame, their sorrow, I endure ;
By their defect my hope is foiled :
The blot they bear is on my name ;
Who sins, and I am not to blame ?
" And how much of your wrong is mine,
Dark women slaving at the South ?
Of your stolen grapes I quaff the wine ;
The bread you starve for fills my mouth :
The beam unwinds, but every thread
Lucy Larcom, artist unknown, engraving, nd, New With blood of strangled souls is red.
York Public Library

23. Luther Terry, An Allegory of North and South, 1857, oil on canvas, Greenville County
Museum of Art

24. Eyre Crowe, Slave Auction in Richmond, Virginia, 1853, oil on canvas, Heinz Collection, DC

25. Edgar Degas, Detail, from Portraits in a
New Orleans Cotton Office, 1873
“Dealers inspecting a Negro at a slave auction in Virginia”
The Illustrated London News (Feb. 16, 1861), p. 138.

27. Winslow Homer, The Cotton Pickers, 1876, oil on canvas, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

28. Jules Breton, The Reapers, 1860, oil on canvas, Kelvingrove
Art Gallery and Museum

29. J Wells Champney, Scenes on a
Cotton Plantation, in Edward King,
The Great South, American
Publishing Company, Hartford,
1875
A Cotton Plantation on the Mississippi, Currier
and Ives, lithograph after William Aiken
Walker, 1884, Yale University Art Gallery

30. Winslow Homer, The Cotton Pickers, 1876, oil on canvas, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

31. Edgar Degas, Portraits in a New Orleans Cotton Office, 1873,
oil on canvas, Musee Des Beaux-Arts, Pau

32. The Cotton Spinners and
Manufacturers' Directory,
Manchester and Salford,
Blackley, Boothstown, Clayton,
Droylsden, Eccles, Failsworth,
Harpurhey, Patricroft,
Pendleton, Pendlebury, Swinton
and Worsley. (John Worral Ltd,
Oldham, 1887), 115

33. Edgar Degas, Portraits in a New Orleans Cotton Office, 1873, oil on canvas, Musee Des
Beaux-Arts, Pau

34. Edgar Degas, Portraits in
a New Orleans Cotton
Office, 1873, oil on
canvas, Musee Des
Beaux-Arts, Pau
Winslow Homer, The
Cotton Pickers, 1876,
oil on canvas, Los
Angeles County
Museum of Art

35. Edgar Degas, Portraits in a New Orleans Cotton Office, 1873,
oil on canvas, Musee Des Beaux-Arts, Pau

36. Interior of the New Orleans Cotton Exchange, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper,
March 24, 1883
Edwin L Jewell, New Orleans Cotton Exchange Building,
Crescent City Illustrated, 1872

37. Edgar Degas, Portraits in a New Orleans Cotton Office, 1873,
oil on canvas, Musee Des Beaux-Arts, Pau

38. Edgar Degas, Portraits in
a New Orleans Cotton
Office, 1873, oil on
canvas, Musee Des
Beaux-Arts, Pau
Winslow Homer, The
Cotton Pickers, 1876,
oil on canvas, Los
Angeles County
Museum of Art

39. Jules Breton, The Reapers, 1860, oil on canvas, Kelvingrove
Art Gallery and Museum

40. Winslow Homer, The Cotton Pickers, 1876, oil on canvas, Los
Angeles County Museum of Art

41. Woman winding shuttle bobbins. engraving aft. Winslow
Homer, in William Cullen Bryant, Song of the Sower, 1881
New-England Factory Life--"Bell Time" , after Winslow
Homer, Harper’s Weekly, 1868, wood engraving

42. Winslow Homer, Old Mill (The Morning Bell), 1871, oil on canvas, Yale University Art Gallery

43. Winslow Homer, The Cotton Pickers,
1876, oil on canvas, Los Angeles
County Museum of Art
Winslow Homer, Old Mill (The Morning
Bell), 1871, oil on canvas, Yale University
Art Gallery

44. Luther Terry, An Allegory of North and South,
1857, oil on canvas, Greenville County
Museum of art
Edgar Degas, Portraits in
a New Orleans Cotton
Office, 1873, oil on
canvas, Musee Des
Beaux-Arts, Pau
Winslow Homer, The
Cotton Pickers, 1876,
oil on canvas, Los
Angeles County
Museum of Art

45. Lubaina Himid, (Detail) Cotton.Com, mixed
media installation, CUBE (Center for Urban
Built Environment) Gallery, Manchester
(2002)

46. Aerial Photograph of the Mills in Ancoats, Royal Commission
for the Historic Monuments of England,1986-1988
William Wyld, A View of Manchester from
Kersal Moor,
(Manchester from Higher Broughton),1852, oil
on canvas, Royal Collection

47. Lubaina Himid, (Detail) Cotton.Com, mixed
media installation, CUBE (Center for Urban
Built Environment) Gallery, Manchester
(2002)

48. Lubaina Himid, Unbelonging, from
Kangas from the Lost Sample
Book, 2011/2012,
Lubaina Himid, Collage, from
Kangas from the Lost Sample
Book, 2011/2012,

49. Anne Wilson, Walking the Warp, Manchester, (film stills), mixed media and dance, Whitworth Art Gallery, 2012

50. Anne Wilson, stills from Wind Up: Walking The Warp
Chicago, mixed media and dance, 2008
Anne Wilson, Local Industry Cloth, cotton cloth, 2010

51. Anne Wilson, Walking the Warp, Manchester, (film stills), mixed media and dance, Whitworth Art Gallery, 2012

53. Leonardo Drew, Number 25, 1992, cotton and wax, Rubell Family Collection