Hottentot Venus (Sarah "Saartjie" Baartmann) | A "Wonderful Living Production of Nature"

Hottentot Venus (Sarah "Saartjie" Baartmann)

Arrived from London, and will be exhibited for a few days…that most wonderful Phenomenon of nature… Colchester: Swinborne and Walter, ca. 1811

Broadside (243 x 194 mm). Numerous fonts, mounted on card; old folds, foxed, faint marginal dampstaining. Mounted, framed, and glazed with Plexiglas; not examined out of frame.  

"The first major ethnological attraction of the nineteenth century featured a Khoi-san woman from South Africa. The Afrikaaner [sic] who brought her to London in 1810 called her Saartjie, or Sarah Baartmann, and she was exhibited in London as 'The Hottentot Venus.' 'Hottentot' was a term used to designate a tribe of a low cultural order, thought to be the 'missing link' between humans and apes" (Jay 68). Controversial in the nineteenth century, Saartjie is much studied today. 

REFERENCE:

EE, pp. 68-69