“Uncle Tiff,” a sculpture by Eugene Warburg, might be the first Black “sculptural subject” created by a Black artist, according to art historian Paul H.D. Kaplan.
It is certainly “one of the very few pre-Civil War visual images in any medium both by and of an African American,” Kaplan added.
Born enslaved in New Orleans in 1825, Warburg’s first name was Joseph. He was owned by his German Jewish immigrant father. His enslaved mother was from Santiago, Cuba.
Warburg, who was 4 years old when his father freed him, received training as a marble cutter at a young age. He created busts, statues and tomb designs at his French Quarter studio in the 1840s and early 1850s. One project “firmly documented as being done by him is the black and white marble pavement of the St. Louis Cathedral,” the Walters Art Museum states.
In 1850, Warburg’s bas-relief, “Ganymede Offering a Cup of Nectar to Jupiter” was on exhibit in New Orleans. It was priced at $500 (the equivalent of $18,898 in 2024).
“Warburg’s most striking work is a small sculptural illustration of two of the characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Dred” (1856), a Black man and a white child,” Kaplan said. “This remarkable work transforms our understanding of Warburg’s career and influence.”
Warburg moved to Europe in 1852 – first to Paris, then London and finally Rome – to produce his art. In 1859, he died a few days after becoming ill.
“What I like about Eugene Warburg’s story is his unyielding search for freedom,” Jari C. Honora, a Historic New Orleans Collection family historian, told WGNO. “He had the freedom to pursue his art form. Like so many, his works were hampered by racial conditions at that time and he had to leave New Orleans to make his mark.”
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