White brides: images of marriage across colonising boundaries

Abstract

Images of "mixed-color" couples depicted in frontier settings could transform weddings into multilayered imaginaries of gender, conquest, and boundary crossing fertility. The painted image of a bride marrying across colonized borders of "color" and culture suggests a cathartic but fleeting historical moment where representatives of the "Old" and "New" worlds appear to unite freely for mutual benefit. Although paintings of such weddings are not common, certain artists used the theme to depict marriages that, for both liminal nations and for later audiences reflecting upon past history, could be both "settling" and "unsettling" in equal measure.