The top image above is from the remarkable folder
of hand colored lithograph prints published in 1927 by the famous French
artist Paul Colin under the title Le Tumulte Noir. Colin's images were inspired by the sensation that Josephine Baker
created in 1925 with her show La
Revue Negre.
His iconic portraits of
Josephine dancing wildly with her banana skirt became synonymous with
the rage for all things African American that swept Paris in those years but
his collection included many other images, including French stars like Maurice
Chevalier and Cecile Sorel. For over eighty
years this image was assumed to be of a male dancer, possibly Spanish.
Seeing it for the first time recently,
in the Art Deco Exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne), I
was struck by the resemblance to photos and images of Florence
Mills performing the number "Shuffling Home" in Blackbirds
of 1926. All the details of the costume matched, as can be seen
from the two lower images ( a publicity photo from Blackbirds of
1926 and a French newspaper cartoon that appeared
when Florence was
performing in Paris for 3 months, at the very time Colin was creating
his famous images).
Intrigued by my apparent discovery of a
previously unidentified historic image of Florence Mills, I sent my evidence to the
American National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institute, which has a
copy of the Paul Colin images in its collection, and was delighted to receive
the following confirmation:
"This is wonderful news. You have
very persuasive evidence and I can’t see any reason not to agree that the
portrait is Florence Mills, especially when she was performing in Blackbirds
in 1926. We do have the entire portfolio so we will change our records. And
hopefully we’ll soon find an opportunity to exhibit our new found Florence
Mills".
With hindsight one can easily now see that it
would have been amazing had Paul Colin not portrayed Florence Mills and her
role in le tumulte noir in those heady days but the truth has
now been revealed and Florence will have another iconic portrait to honor her
in the USA National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC.