Lot 221: AGOSTINO BRUNIAS

A GROUP OF CREOLE WOMEN AND THEIR SERVANTS IN DOMINICA

14 1/2 by 25 1/2 in.; 36.8 by 64.8 cm.

oil on canvas

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 15 July 1983, lot 75 (where listed as formerly in the collection of the Earl of Rosebery);
Where acquired by the present owner.

The island of Dominica, located between the French islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, is the largest of the Leeward islands in the Lesser Antilles. The island itself had been a French possession until it was ceded to Britain in 1763 in the Peace of Paris. Over the next several decades, France and Britain continued to battle over their colonial possessions in the New World, and Dominica, with its lucrative sugar planations, was one of the most hotly contested territories in the Caribbean. (1 )In spite of this instability, Dominica benefited from a relatively liberal colonial government, and had developed a highly complex, hybrid social structure which incorporated European, Caribbean and African influences. By the time Agostino Brunias came to the island in 1764 with the newly appointed British governor Sir William Young, an intricate hierarchy of European plantation owners, mulattoes - or what we would today call Creole people of mixed ancestry - freedmen, native islanders and African slaves had been established. Although employed by the British governor, Brunias rarely painted European land owners, instead turning his brush to the depiction of the "exotic" peoples of the islands, especially the Creole women.

The present painting seems to depict a group of three "mulatresses," or West Indian Creole women, with their children and slaves, promenading in a landscape. As art historian Kay Dian Kriz has noted, "Brunias does not rely on tonal differences in skin color to distinguish his figures - dress, physical location, and relationships augmented (and occasionally overruled) color as the sign of social and racial difference. Light-skinned women of color are usually shown more lavishly dressed than their darker-skinned counterparts and are often accompanied by darker-skinned slaves or servants." (2) Thus, of the three Creole women depicted here, we can assume that the young womanin white at the center of the composition, who points to her dandyish young son, is of the highest social status, while her companion to the right, in the black hat, is only slightly below her in importance. The woman dressed in blue and yellow to their left, with her darker skin and less striking dress, is also Creole, and although below the other women in importance, is still of higher standing than their accompanying slaves and servants.

As markers of social status, the sumptuous fashions of Creole women were elaborate amalgamations of European, Caribbean and African influences. Brunias has here depicted all the elements of the costume with great exactitude: a head-tie of brilliant white, usually topped with a European hat tipped forward over their eyes; an intricate bodice, sometimes trimmed with lace or ribbons; a full cotton skirt, which was sometimes pinned up at one side to reveal a glimpse of their elaborate petticoats; and, covering their shoulders, a shawl-like "foulard," a triangle of silk or cotton cloth, worn to match the head-tie. These women also wear coral necklaces and pearl-earrings, again mixing Afro-Caribbean and European adornments. Brunias has depicted these outfits with attention to even the slightest details, an attention he equally pays to the costumes of the male slaves. Dressed in livery that is evocative of military dress, these men appear to be household servants and attendants. Their elaborate blue coats, with gold brocade and buttons again point to the wealth and status of the Creole women, who can afford to outfit their servants in such a way.

The tiny dogs that scamper at the feet of the figures provide a touch of whimsy and narrative to the composition, while throughout Brunias's attention to the details of clothing creates a kaleidescope of color and pattern. More than an ethnographic study of the peoples of the Caribbean, Brunias has himself created a hybrid art form: part traditional European genre scene, part anthropological study, the present painting is a perfect embodiment of Brunias's oeuvre, where colonization and its resulting collision of different groups of people is always shown in the best possible light. That today our post-colonial viewpoint makes us skeptical of such an idyllic scene should not detract from Brunias's gem-like canvas.

Although little critical attention was paid to Brunias's work after the French ethnologist E.-T. Hamy published his "Alexander Brunias, Peintre Ethnographe de la fin dy XVIIIe siècle, Courte Notice sur son Oeuvre," in L'Anthropologie, I, 1890, pp. 45-56, he is currently experiencing a period of renewed interest, especially among scholars studying the effects and modes of colonization, and the ways in which colonized and colonizer were depicted in works of art.

We are grateful to Dr. Beth Tobin for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.


1. After the Peace of Paris, the French recaptured the island in 1778, only to have it regained by the British in 1783. The French made one last attempt to regain control of the island in 1802, but after a brief success, the island was finally surrendered to the British later that same year.
2. K. D. Kriz, Slavery, Sugar, and the Culture of Refinement: Picturing the British West Indies, 1700-1840, New Haven 2008, p. 59.