Augustino BRUNIAS (Rome, circa 1730 - Roseau , La Dominique, - Lot 379

Augustino BRUNIAS (Rome, circa 1730 - Roseau , La Dominique, 1796) Freed slaves of Saint-Domingue Pair of oak panels, one board, not parqueted Height: 24 cm Width: 17.7 cm Note: Born in Rome, Brunias spent most of his career in London and the Caribbean. In 1758, he followed Scottish architect Robert Adam in England, where he drew up plans to assist the architect. He then travelled to Dominica, a new British colony, between 1767 and 1770, as private painter to the colony's first the colony's first governor, Sir William Young. These paintings offer a glimpse of the reality of life in the colonies, a land of influences and exchanges between European, African and Caribbean cultures. After his return to England in 1773, he continued to depict the colonies, publishing a series of engravings and exhibiting at the Royal Academy. exhibited at the Royal Academy. The first painting depicts three women and a child beside a river. Behind them, the river vegetation and a partly overcast sky. The woman furthest to the right is black, the other two are mixed-race. The black woman is carrying the clean linen on her head, while the woman in the middle is holding a beater. the third, kneeling, appears to be cleaning the linen. Despite their ethnic differences, all three are and similarly dressed, they seem to belong to the same social class. The second painting shows three black people, a man on the left and two women on the right, all richly dressed. Behind them, two palm trees stand out against a partially overcast sky. a partially overcast sky. The work is part of the artist's desire to depict local life and the class class transfer of certain former slaves. The figures are, in fact, dressed in the fashion of European European settlers. As usual, the artist offers several versions of these works, changing compositional details such as colors, characters and vegetation. He also presents works that respond to each other the same dimensions, so he can decorate the same area with several of them. of them. Two engravings of our first painting, one in black and white and one in color, are held at the Yale Center for British Art. Another color engraving is preserved at the Musée du Nouveau Monde in La Rochelle. on which the woman in the center is white. All three engravings are entitled Blanchisseuse des Indes Indes occidentale. Our second painting exists in an almost identical version preserved at the Yale Center for British Art and on temporary display at the Metopolitan Museum (The Interwoven Globe - Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500-1800, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013-09-10 - 2014-01-05). This one is called Free West Indian Dominicans. Brunias painted for sponsors who wanted the artist to represent their families, their lands and those and those who work on them, within a hierarchical and orderly colonial life. They wanted the workers to be clean and cheerful. These commissions enabled the artist to propose subversive art subversive art that serves a critical political discourse on the artificiality of racial hierarchy. Through his genre scenes his genre scenes, the consideration that people might have for the black and mixed-race populations of the islands. These represent the effervescence of black culture, with its traditions, festivals, dances and even markets. markets. The artist seems to be both celebrating and criticizing an African culture incorporated into a local culture. He offers a romanticized vision of a peaceful society, where relationships relationships seem rather harmonious, if complex. In another Brunias painting, Free women of color with their Children and Servants in a Landscape (Brooklyn Museum), a class difference is depicted between the free women, who are "mulattos", and their black servants. Women of mixed race seem to enjoy a distinct status, which still makes skin color a social marker. In contrast, our second picture shows freedmen, their skin color no longer suggests their social status. The man is black, but dressed similar to the white figure in Handkerchief dance on the island of Dominica (private collection). The of the man in our painting indicates a privileged status, or simply an intention to claim it, despite his skin color. despite his skin color. Brunias follows the trend of representing emerging population categories, mulattoes and freedmen emancipated; the result of the intermingling of populations that rubbed shoulders as a result of the triangular trade, notably Europeans and Africans