Friday, April 21, 2017

"Louisiana Sisters" Creole Folk art by Andrew LaMar Hopkins

"Louisiana Sisters" 8 x 10 Creole Folk art by Andrew LaMar Hopkins

My latest Masterpiece is titled "Louisiana Sisters" It shows a late 18th century Louisiana interior of two fashionably dressed Aristocrat Creole sisters arranging flowers by a fire. A Border-Collie pup is lying stretched out next to the fire. The room is a fashionably furnished salon of a Creole home from the date of about 1790's. The interior has Louisiana made Creole furniture like the Creole armoire and Cabriole Leg Table the sisters are arranging flowers on. One sister sits in a French imported Louis XVI armchair and the other in a Louisiana made mahogany and leather Campeche chair. 

The Campeche chair, also known as a "plantation chair," is a type of lounge chair popular in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the American South. Its name comes from the Campeche region of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, which manufactured and exported the chairs in the 18th and 19th centuries. The architectural piece in the room is the Creole Louis XVI style wraparound mantel and over mantel. On the over mantel is a English Adam style shield shape Neoclassical gilt wood mirror. On the mantel a English Blue John urn mounted with French Louis XVI style ormolu. Next to the urn is a Hurricane globe with French brass candlestick. Over the Louisiana made table is a 1770's French portrait of a ancestor in carved gilt-wood Louis XVI oval frame. Creoles were very proud of family portraits and prominently hung them for display. Most Creole homes are modest buildings from the outside.

 Creole did not like to show off with the exteriors of their buildings like the Americans flooding into Louisiana at this time. But it was said that many Creole homes were furnished and decorated rich and elegant inside like this interior. Louisiana’s eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Creoles were a permissive, fun-loving, and status-conscious people with a fondness for European courtly customs. These included good manners, lavish hospitality, close family ties, dancing, and gambling. Creoles also practiced the widespread European custom of dueling—over both important and trivial matters. In addition, they sanctioned a double moral standard which placed women on pedestals but encouraged young men to sow their wild oats. Available 8 x 10.





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