拍品專文
For a variant of this scene by Brunias, see the painting sold at Christie's, South Kensington, Nov. 19, 1985, lot 17.
Dominica was discovered by Columbus in 1493 (and named in commemoration of the day of its discovery), the largest of the Leeward group of the Lesser Antilles, lying between the French islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe with its capital at Roseau (Charlottetown), a fortified port near the southern end of the island. Colonial settlements began to grow after the French appointed a Commander to Dominica in 1727 and began importing African slaves from neighboring islands to work the sugar estates. Slaves were imported directly from Africa from 1760. The island was ceded to England by France at the Peace of Paris in 1763, captured by the French in 1778, regained by the British in 1783, briefly recaptured by the French in 1802, and finally surrendered to Britain in 1802.
Dominica enjoyed a relatively liberal system of rule and attracted freed slaves and 'Free People of Color' from neighbouring islands who joined the Caribs, African slaves and Mulattoes to create a hybrid culture which is the focus of attention of all Brunias's work in Dominica: 'The Slave dress was a dull and unimaginative smock, made from one piece of coarse cotton. The Mulatto women however, could dress as they wished, and used this in an attempt to show their superiority over the slaves. Borrowing the styles of European dress from the fashionable estate mistresses, and the love of color from the African slaves, from whom they sprung, the Mulatto women dressed extravagantly, in silks and cotton, at least externally providing them with an illusion of position and status they could otherwise not achieve.
The result was a unique and sumptuous ensemble consisting of a head-tie of brilliant color, most often of white with vivid crimson or canary yellow stripes sometimes shaped into a bonnet; a large white blouse trimmed with lace or delicately patterned colored ribbons at the neck and hem over a full cotton skirt; and over the blouse a loosely tied 'foulard', a triangle of cotton or silk to match the head-tie. Late voluminous starched petticoats were worn, with the skirt drawn up on one side to reveal the beauty of the lace and ribbons decorating the petticoat ... In time the slave women, who were allowed to dress up on holidays, would compete with the 'Free Women of Color', purchasing their dress and accessories with money earned from selling their spare produce grown on the small plots allowed the slaves by their masters, reflecting in turn their desire to be accepted as people worthy of social recognition.
In several of Brunias's paintings we see the Mulatto women dressed in the fashions of the day, attended by their slaves who shaded them from the sun at the market place, serving drinks as the ladies relaxed in the shade of a tree or bearing their mistresses purchases on their heads .... The Mulatto men paid equal attention to their dress, with perhaps not as much style as the women, but certainly a noticeable difference in appearance between themselves and the poorly regarded slave. A turban was worn and a hat carried in the hand, with considerable social significance. A simple white collarless shirt with a madras coat of matching style to that worn by the women was sported, with a pair of Osnaberg trousers, similar to the slaves issue, but with a noticeable difference in the finish of the buttons, often of gold, and braiding. Special pride was placed upon their shoes and stockings, the shoes being buckled, the stockings silk. To complete their outfit, the men wore a watch and chain, carried an elaborate walking stick and, on occasion, wore earrings.' (Mulattoes: The Eighteenth century birth of a culture, from Mark Pereira's forthcoming Illustrated Biography of Augustin Brunias).
Little has been published on Brunias since the French ethnologist E.-T. Hamy's discussion of his pictures and engravings (E.-T. Hamy, Alexander Brunias, Peintre Ethnographe de la fin dy XVIIIe sicle, Courte Notice sur son Oeuvre, L'Anthropologie, I, 1890, pp. 45-56) and Hans Huth's article Agostino Brunias, Romano (The Connoisseur, Dec. 1962, pp. 264-9).
The artist is recorded in Rome from 1748 where he was a student at the Accademia di S. Luca and was employed as a draughtsman by Robert Adam in Italy in 1756 ('he does all my Ornaments, and all my figures vastly well', R. Adam in a letter to his brother James, Sept., 1756). He came to England with Adam in 1758 continuing to work as an architectural draughtsman and extending his repertoire to produce, under Adam's direction, a View of Inverary for the Duke of Argyll in 1758 and five paintings to decorate the Breakfast Room at Kedlestone Hall in 1761. He exhibited landscapes at the Free Society of Artists in 1762 and 1763, worked under the direction of the architect William Chambers in 1765-7 and in 1770 exhibited two drawings 'after nature' at the Society of Arts.
It is thought Brunias accompanied Sir William Young, the first British Governor of Dominica, to the West Indies in 1770, and his work from this time concentrates on subjects in the West Indies, in particular in Dominica, St. Vincent, Saint Christopher and Barbados, painted for Sir William Young and for the rich white oligarchs who ran estates on the islands, such as Sir Patrick Blake and Sir Ralph Payne. He appears to have returned to England in 1773, probably with Sir William Young, giving his address in Soho when he exhibited Dominican subjects at the Royal Academy in 1777 and 1779, and publishing the first editions of engravings after his paintings in Soho in 1779-80. Engravings after his pictures in the collection of Sir William Young illustrated Bryan Edwards's The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, 1807. He returned to work in the West Indies in the 1780s and remained there until his death in Roseau, Dominica, in April 1796.
Brunias's work is an important record of his life in the Lesser Antilles in the second half of the eighteenth century depicting the islands at the zenith of British military and commercial domination. Unlike Thomas Hearne, with whom Brunias has much in common (Hearne followed Brunias to the West Indies to commemorate Sir Ralph Payne's Stewardship of the Leeward Islands in a series of twenty large topographical watercolors), Brunias's surviving pictures reveal that he became primarily a figure painter in the West Indies, concentrating on the new culture of the Mulatto, born from the mixture of European, African and Carib races. Hence his fascination in the nineteenth century for French ethnologists such as Hamy: 'tout l'ensemble de l'oeuvre de notre peintre ethnographe est d'ailleurs ... d'une exactitude quasi scientifique, done ne se proccupaient gure les peintres de 1780. Que l'on souvienne, que Camper travaillait cette mme date, la Dissertation sur les varits naturelles qui caractrisent la physionomie des hommes des divers climats et diffrents ges, o, i'on peut dire les critiques si justes sur l'ignorance des matres de la peinture modern en matire d'ethnographie ... Brunias, don't j'ai eu la satisfaction d'exhumber l'oeuvre entirement oublie, mrite de prendre une modest place ... sur la liste des graveurs qui ont introduit l'ethnographie dans le domaine de l'art. Il est, en tout cas, le premier, par ordre de date, de ces artistes voyageurs si nombreux depuis lors et parfois si habiles qui ont consacr une partie de leur talent reprsenter d'aprs nature, en toute sincerit, les divers aspects de l'humanit exotique.' (E.-T. Hamy, op. cit., pp. 55-6).
While Hamy continues to praise his 'verit ethnographique' over that of Cook's artists and his contemporaries, Hodges and Webber, Brunias's pictures have much in common with the engrossing and theatrical work of English painters steeped in academic and classical tradition who travelled to the New World and the South Seas in the second half of the eighteenth century.
A preparatory drawing for the Mulatto women in the foreground of the second painting on the right, inscribed 'Ma commre' (the old gossip), recurs in a number of Brunias's pictures, and in reverse in the posthumous stipple engraving by Brown (published by J.P. Thompson, 1804, 'The Linen Market at Santo Domingo'), was sold at Christie's, London, July 14, 1995, lot 5 (fig. 1).
Dominica was discovered by Columbus in 1493 (and named in commemoration of the day of its discovery), the largest of the Leeward group of the Lesser Antilles, lying between the French islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe with its capital at Roseau (Charlottetown), a fortified port near the southern end of the island. Colonial settlements began to grow after the French appointed a Commander to Dominica in 1727 and began importing African slaves from neighboring islands to work the sugar estates. Slaves were imported directly from Africa from 1760. The island was ceded to England by France at the Peace of Paris in 1763, captured by the French in 1778, regained by the British in 1783, briefly recaptured by the French in 1802, and finally surrendered to Britain in 1802.
Dominica enjoyed a relatively liberal system of rule and attracted freed slaves and 'Free People of Color' from neighbouring islands who joined the Caribs, African slaves and Mulattoes to create a hybrid culture which is the focus of attention of all Brunias's work in Dominica: 'The Slave dress was a dull and unimaginative smock, made from one piece of coarse cotton. The Mulatto women however, could dress as they wished, and used this in an attempt to show their superiority over the slaves. Borrowing the styles of European dress from the fashionable estate mistresses, and the love of color from the African slaves, from whom they sprung, the Mulatto women dressed extravagantly, in silks and cotton, at least externally providing them with an illusion of position and status they could otherwise not achieve.
The result was a unique and sumptuous ensemble consisting of a head-tie of brilliant color, most often of white with vivid crimson or canary yellow stripes sometimes shaped into a bonnet; a large white blouse trimmed with lace or delicately patterned colored ribbons at the neck and hem over a full cotton skirt; and over the blouse a loosely tied 'foulard', a triangle of cotton or silk to match the head-tie. Late voluminous starched petticoats were worn, with the skirt drawn up on one side to reveal the beauty of the lace and ribbons decorating the petticoat ... In time the slave women, who were allowed to dress up on holidays, would compete with the 'Free Women of Color', purchasing their dress and accessories with money earned from selling their spare produce grown on the small plots allowed the slaves by their masters, reflecting in turn their desire to be accepted as people worthy of social recognition.
In several of Brunias's paintings we see the Mulatto women dressed in the fashions of the day, attended by their slaves who shaded them from the sun at the market place, serving drinks as the ladies relaxed in the shade of a tree or bearing their mistresses purchases on their heads .... The Mulatto men paid equal attention to their dress, with perhaps not as much style as the women, but certainly a noticeable difference in appearance between themselves and the poorly regarded slave. A turban was worn and a hat carried in the hand, with considerable social significance. A simple white collarless shirt with a madras coat of matching style to that worn by the women was sported, with a pair of Osnaberg trousers, similar to the slaves issue, but with a noticeable difference in the finish of the buttons, often of gold, and braiding. Special pride was placed upon their shoes and stockings, the shoes being buckled, the stockings silk. To complete their outfit, the men wore a watch and chain, carried an elaborate walking stick and, on occasion, wore earrings.' (Mulattoes: The Eighteenth century birth of a culture, from Mark Pereira's forthcoming Illustrated Biography of Augustin Brunias).
Little has been published on Brunias since the French ethnologist E.-T. Hamy's discussion of his pictures and engravings (E.-T. Hamy, Alexander Brunias, Peintre Ethnographe de la fin dy XVIIIe sicle, Courte Notice sur son Oeuvre, L'Anthropologie, I, 1890, pp. 45-56) and Hans Huth's article Agostino Brunias, Romano (The Connoisseur, Dec. 1962, pp. 264-9).
The artist is recorded in Rome from 1748 where he was a student at the Accademia di S. Luca and was employed as a draughtsman by Robert Adam in Italy in 1756 ('he does all my Ornaments, and all my figures vastly well', R. Adam in a letter to his brother James, Sept., 1756). He came to England with Adam in 1758 continuing to work as an architectural draughtsman and extending his repertoire to produce, under Adam's direction, a View of Inverary for the Duke of Argyll in 1758 and five paintings to decorate the Breakfast Room at Kedlestone Hall in 1761. He exhibited landscapes at the Free Society of Artists in 1762 and 1763, worked under the direction of the architect William Chambers in 1765-7 and in 1770 exhibited two drawings 'after nature' at the Society of Arts.
It is thought Brunias accompanied Sir William Young, the first British Governor of Dominica, to the West Indies in 1770, and his work from this time concentrates on subjects in the West Indies, in particular in Dominica, St. Vincent, Saint Christopher and Barbados, painted for Sir William Young and for the rich white oligarchs who ran estates on the islands, such as Sir Patrick Blake and Sir Ralph Payne. He appears to have returned to England in 1773, probably with Sir William Young, giving his address in Soho when he exhibited Dominican subjects at the Royal Academy in 1777 and 1779, and publishing the first editions of engravings after his paintings in Soho in 1779-80. Engravings after his pictures in the collection of Sir William Young illustrated Bryan Edwards's The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, 1807. He returned to work in the West Indies in the 1780s and remained there until his death in Roseau, Dominica, in April 1796.
Brunias's work is an important record of his life in the Lesser Antilles in the second half of the eighteenth century depicting the islands at the zenith of British military and commercial domination. Unlike Thomas Hearne, with whom Brunias has much in common (Hearne followed Brunias to the West Indies to commemorate Sir Ralph Payne's Stewardship of the Leeward Islands in a series of twenty large topographical watercolors), Brunias's surviving pictures reveal that he became primarily a figure painter in the West Indies, concentrating on the new culture of the Mulatto, born from the mixture of European, African and Carib races. Hence his fascination in the nineteenth century for French ethnologists such as Hamy: 'tout l'ensemble de l'oeuvre de notre peintre ethnographe est d'ailleurs ... d'une exactitude quasi scientifique, done ne se proccupaient gure les peintres de 1780. Que l'on souvienne, que Camper travaillait cette mme date, la Dissertation sur les varits naturelles qui caractrisent la physionomie des hommes des divers climats et diffrents ges, o, i'on peut dire les critiques si justes sur l'ignorance des matres de la peinture modern en matire d'ethnographie ... Brunias, don't j'ai eu la satisfaction d'exhumber l'oeuvre entirement oublie, mrite de prendre une modest place ... sur la liste des graveurs qui ont introduit l'ethnographie dans le domaine de l'art. Il est, en tout cas, le premier, par ordre de date, de ces artistes voyageurs si nombreux depuis lors et parfois si habiles qui ont consacr une partie de leur talent reprsenter d'aprs nature, en toute sincerit, les divers aspects de l'humanit exotique.' (E.-T. Hamy, op. cit., pp. 55-6).
While Hamy continues to praise his 'verit ethnographique' over that of Cook's artists and his contemporaries, Hodges and Webber, Brunias's pictures have much in common with the engrossing and theatrical work of English painters steeped in academic and classical tradition who travelled to the New World and the South Seas in the second half of the eighteenth century.
A preparatory drawing for the Mulatto women in the foreground of the second painting on the right, inscribed 'Ma commre' (the old gossip), recurs in a number of Brunias's pictures, and in reverse in the posthumous stipple engraving by Brown (published by J.P. Thompson, 1804, 'The Linen Market at Santo Domingo'), was sold at Christie's, London, July 14, 1995, lot 5 (fig. 1).