In the Flesh at the Heart of Empire: Life-Likeness in Wax Representations of the 1762 Cherokee Delegation in London

Abstract

In 1762, a delegation of Cherokee leaders arrived in London for negotiations with King George III following the Anglo-Cherokee War (1759–1761), itself part of the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). The British public reacted to the men’s presence in London with fervent zeal; throngs of Londoners flocked to the men’s private rooms and any public house, garden, or theatre they attended to see them in person before their very eyes. This article asks why the delegation became such a spectacle by studying three wax statues that were made in the image of the men and were exhibited at Mrs. Salmon’s Royal Wax-Work in London from 1762 to approximately 1793, after which they were lost to history. In questioning how the life-likeness of the wax statues was achieved through materiality and visual elements, and analysing contemporary accounts of the London public’s reception of the men, it emerges that the statues worked to retain their subjects as objects of spectacle long after they returned to North America. Due to the low aesthetic status and fragility of wax statuary, the medium has received little art-historical attention despite the significance of the art form in eighteenth-century London. This article seeks to address this oversight and bring new insight to the imperial visual culture of eighteenth-century Britain.