Die Erlösung Chams

Brazil had abolished slavery only in 1888, seven years before Modesto Brocos finished this painting in Rio de Janeiro, and the country's elites were anxiously debating what its people should become. Many embraced a theory of gradual whitening, the notion that through mixed marriages each generation would grow paler and, they claimed, closer to a European ideal. Brocos set that theory out as a single family. A dark-skinned grandmother raises her hands in thanks, her lighter daughter sits with a white husband, and on the mother's lap the pale grandchild completes the supposed progression. The title reaches back to the biblical curse of Ham, long misused to justify the enslavement of Africans. The Rio academy where Brocos taught awarded the canvas a gold medal that same year.