Rowntree’s Chocolate (advert) 1930s
John Millar Watt (1895-1975)
6.25 x 14.75 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection

Watt was apprenticed to an advertising agency while attending evening classes at the Westminster School of Art. His apprenticeship was interrupted in 1915 by World War I. After being discharged, he studied briefly at Slade School of Art before returning to advertising work.

This drawing is my second example from an advertising campaign for well-known British chocolate maker “Rowntree’s Chocolate,” which routinely identified the color of its confections with the skin tones of Black people, particularly young girls, or here with blackface characters during the minstrel revival in the 1930s. Although not identified by name, the drawings may well represent Alexander & Mose, blackface radio show minstrels Billy Bennett and Albert Whalen, from the US, who were popular at this time.

These depictions did not improve (see: the “Honeybunch” campaign, in the late 1940s and early 1950s).

Although now owned by Nestle, the history of Rowntree’s is that of a business selling ‘commodities of empire,’ with its production and manufacturing derived from colonial indenture, with enslaved and/or unfree workers recruited from India and Southeast Asia to work on plantations in the Caribbean and West Africa.