If one looks at the painting we are talking about today, we can think that it is one more. In it, we see three children from a wealthy family of Louisiana (United States) in a country landscape. However, everything changed when the work was restored.

In doing so, a fourth person appeared, a young black man who was the slave who took care of the little ones. Let’s go by parts to try to understand the mystery that surrounds this work. ‘three children in a landscape‘ was the name given to the painting, which was donated to the New Orleans Museum of Art in 1971. It was stored there without being exhibited and was later auctioned.

In 2005, the person who got hold of the painting restored it and discovered the figure of belizaire, name of the young slave. The painting was commissioned in 1837 by Frederick Frey, a prominent Louisiana merchant. In it he portrayed his children together with the slave who had been owned by the family since he was 6 years old.

We now know that the children died soon after, that the family business took a turn for the worse, and that after the merchant’s death, his widow sold Belizaire to another family. Shortly after, the Civil War began and that is where his track is lost. It is not known if Bélizaire died a slave or a free man.

The painting remained in the family, but around 1905 someone made the slave disappear. With this story in hand, the Metropolitan Museum of New York has acquired the painting for its exceptionality and will exhibit it telling its story as a metaphor for the millions of lives that, like Bélizaire, raised a country that erased them from official history.