Brunias was an Italian decorative history painter who studied in Rome and won a prize at the Academy of St. Luke in 1752. He came to the attention of Robert Adam and Jacques-Louis Clérisseau who employed him as an architectural draughtsman and took him to Spalato in 1756. He returned with Adam to London in 1758 and remained in his employment for several years. Brunias exhibited landscapes with ruins and figures at the Free Society in London in 1763 and 1764 and painted decorative schemes for panels and ceilings. By 1770 he was in the West Indies where he lived for the most part on the island of Dominica, painting West Indian genre scenes for the Englishmen living there. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1777-79 after having returned to London in 1773.

The above paintings may have been part of a decorative scheme depicting allegories of the continents