In contrast to Motley’s portrayal of the position and character of racially mixed women is his depiction of a dark-skinned African American (fig. 5). Variously titled Mammy, Woman Peeling Apples, and Nancy, 34 this arresting image shows a middle-aged woman sitting against a white wall with a bowl of apples in her lap. Motley’s treatment of his subject is as usual carefully observed and rendered. Instead of the tastefully appointed, modern backgrounds of Motley’s Octoroon Girl and Mulatress, this setting is plain. The figure wears a mismatched ensemble comprising a blue-and-white checked dress and an orange-and-green kerchief covering her gray hair. The purple scarf, pinned around her neck with a brooch, seems a last-minute addition, intended to formalize her appearance for this occasion. She possesses no signs of wealth: she holds not the gloves of a life of leisure but rather a paring knife and an apple; she does not pause in her work as she poses for the artist. Unlike the model for A Mulatress, her wrinkled face, with its large eyes and lips and broad nose, seems tired and kind, and her body expansive and soft. While the composition’s spartan simplicity emphasizes the subject’s quiet strength and dignified demeanor, the fact that Motley did not place an African American with dark skin within the same material circumstances as he did individuals with lighter skin seems noteworthy. Perhaps the settings and props the artist used reflected the specific circumstances of the individuals who posed for him. However, Motley repeated the same accessories in painting after painting, which suggests that he exerted control over how his sitters were depicted. Thus, it is plausible that in Mammy he also revealed judgments of his own related to skin color, physiognomic features, and class.

Motley’s portrait series, sensitively conceived and beautifully executed, is nonetheless marked by the complexities that resulted from the intersection of race and class in his world and that prevent us from understanding the distinctions he made between African Americans. On the one hand, he relied on established stereotypes that equated physical appearance, including facial features and skin color, with social status and personality traits, thus generalizing racial “types”; on the other, he portrayed individual African Americans at a time when this was an uncommon practice, in order to convey the subjectivity, achievements, and variety among black Americans. In these works, the artist’s goal––to depict a “full gamut”––also allowed him to declare his own racial identity and place in a social hierarchy.