This is the best known and most discussed image of the master of early minstrel dance, William Henry Lane, or 'Boz's Juba,' dancing at Vauxhall Gardens in 1848. Much has been made of this image, as an illustration of his dance, his personal style and his cultural milieu; the two most influential commentaries are by Marian Hannah Winter and Brenda Dixon Gottschild. Both argue that Juba contributed an African idiom of dance and rhythm to American dance through his involvement with the early minstrel show, because of his authenticity as a performer of colour with roots in an African and African-American slave culture.  There is ample evidence that his style of dance was strikingly different from other performers, in and out of the minstrel show, and that his was a whole-body, rhythmically syncopated performance. The visitor to this page should take a look at these interpretations, in these two articles and elsewhere on this site, in Past the Documents and Witness to Juba [Note].

But then take a closer look at this image. What does it really show us?  Does this support the argument, or is it a strike against it?  Is this an artist's rendering of a unique event, or a compendium of stock imagery?  Can we learn anything at all about Juba and his dance from this image, or does it completely, utterly lie?

Let’s suppose for a moment that this is not an accurate record, but a cleaned up, toned down, and formulaic image of a performer, which could have been done by someone who didn’t bother to see him perform.  If so, it is still significant, perhaps just as significant as if it was a true likeness, because it tells us something about the attitude of the artist toward the performer.  Or it may--  By this scenario, someone thought that:  it was only Vauxhall, a lower-middle-class, slightly disreputable venue, so there was no need to attend; it was only a minstrel show, a popular but also a suspect form, so there was no need to be accurate; it was ‘like a jig,’ and the group ‘like Africans,’ so stock images would suffice; and yet, it was all going into the Illustrated London News with a good review, so a respectable image of the dancer was in order.  The artist, by this argument, took control of the dancer--lowered his legs, pocketed his hands, and made him more black.  The whole image tends to describe the carelessness of the witness in this case, and his dismissiveness, and his capacity to make this wild form somehow more polite. 

Unless, of course, it wasn’t like that at all.  Click on various parts of this image for more commentary, and come to your own conclusions.