The Met’s latest addition to its permanent collection is unlocking a 200 year old mystery

The story at the heart of this acquisition is one of restoration and erasure. A report by Alexandra Eaton for the New York Times chronicled the complicated journey of the painting to the Met, bringing to light its true story, which begins in New Orleans’ French Quarter in the 1830s. At the time, Frederick Frey is a wealthy banker and merchant who commissions French painter Jacques Guillaume Lucien Amans to create a portrait of his three children, Léontine, Elizabeth and Frederick Jr. In the painting, you could make out a figure who also stood by the children, leaning against a tree, but in the years since it was painted, that figure had been erased, leaving only an aura, a suggestion of someone who had been intentionally removed from the picture. 

It is speculated that the painting had been altered by a descendant of Frederick Frey, during the Jim Crow era, and before the great-great granddaughter of Frey’s wife Coraline donated it to the New Orleans Museum of Art in 1971. She mentioned that she believed that an enslaved child had been removed from the painting. But the museum never cleaned or analysed the piece so it was put into storage for over 30 years. Eventually, the piece was put up for auction in 2005 and sold for $6,000 to a Virginian antiques dealer. When speaking to the Times about the decision to sell the work, the Museum’s former director said: “I think in hindsight it was a mistake,”. The portrait was then restored, bringing to light the missing piece of this artistic puzzle. 

The painting revealed that a young enslaved boy had in fact been concealed. According to the Times, the Frey family owned multiple slaves, one of which has been identified as the young boy in the painting, Bélizaire, who would have been fifteen years old when the portrait was made, and who would have been tasked with taking care of the Frey children. Records show that Bélizaire had been purchased by the family at the age of 6 and was subsequently sold in 1856 to the Evergreen Plantation. Unfortunately, what became of him after that remains unknown for now. 

The story of this mystery-ridden painting caught the attention of art restorator Jeremy K. Simien in 2021, who was moved by the boy’s story, explaining that “It was the fact he was covered up that haunted me”. He acquired the work and, with the help of historian Katy Morlas Shannon, he worked to further restore it and to uncover more information about it and about Bélizaire. His wish was that the painting would hang in a museum, for all to see, so that Bélizaire’s story, which had been hidden away for decades, would finally be told. That wish was granted when the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired it in 2023.