Remapping the “Paris” Art World in Haiti/Saint-Domingue
Oliver Wunsch (Boston College) In a pastel portrait by Jean-Baptiste Perronneau, an array of colors define the face of the French plantation owner Aimé-Benjamin Fleuriau (1709–1787) (Fig. 1). A shadow of bluish grays and earthen browns creeps across his right side. On the left, yellow striations give his jaw a warm glow. Touches of pink …
Continue reading “Fleuriau’s Skin”
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Esther Chadwick (Courtauld Institute of Art) On November 18, 1816, King Henry Christophe (1767-1820) wrote from his palace in the postrevolutionary Kingdom of Hayti to Thomas Clarkson, the British abolitionist, to announce the presence of a new art school: “Mr. Evans, the teacher of drawing and painting, is established at Sans Souci, and his school …
Continue reading “The Academy of Drawing and Painting at Sans-Souci, 1816-17”
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Sophia Kitlinksi (Yale University) In the final years of King Henry Christophe’s reign over northern Haiti (r. 1811–20), a Black man arrived at Christophe’s royal court in the opulent palace of Sans-Souci. He sought artistic instruction under British painter Richard Evans at the recently established Academy of Painting and Drawing. To reach the Academy, the …
Continue reading “Drawing the Legacy of Henry Christophe”
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Meredith Martin (New York University) In 1786, an enslaved man called Jean-François escaped from the Lilavois plantation, where this marker is located (Fig. 1). A reward was offered for his capture in the Saint-Domingue newspaper Affiches américaines, which regularly published advertisements for enslaved “runaways” (maroons). From this ad we learn, among other things, that Jean-François …
Continue reading “Wigs and Enslaved Wigmakers”
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Julia Prest (University of St Andrews) Elisabeth Alexandrine Louise Ferrand, known as “Minette” (1767-1807), was an actor-singer of mixed racial ancestry.[1] She and her half-sister, Lise, are the only two performers of color known to have appeared on the Saint-Dominguan stage whose names have made their way down to us.[2] Minette was born and raised …
Continue reading “A Créole Performer Onstage: Minette”
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Julia Prest (University of St Andrews) The playhouse most closely associated with the town of Port-au-Prince during the colonial era was built in 1777 and inaugurated with a performance of Martini and Durosoy’s Henri IV, ou la Bataille d’Ivry on 1 January 1778. However, public theatre also existed in Port-au-Prince prior to this date. There …
Continue reading “The Port-au-Prince Playhouse”
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Mary Pedley (William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan) The map entitled Plan de la plaine du Cap François en l’Isle St. Domingue is a fascinating example of cartographic composition and engraving skill (Fig. 1). It combines the measured detail of property surveys, the shaded values of topographical depiction, the soundings and nautical codes of …
Continue reading “René Phelipeau and the Plan de la Plaine du Cap François, 1786”
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David Pullins (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) In June 1802, a well-established Parisian painter, Rose-Adélaïde Ducreux (1761-1802), sketched the disembarkment in Port-au-Prince of the seventy-four-gun Zélé warship that over the past four months had brought her safely from Brest.[1] It was one of forty-five ships that set sail as part of Napoleon’s efforts to …
Continue reading “Always Already Colonial: Rose Ducreux in Port-au-Prince”
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Meredith Martin (New York University) Collaboration and conversation are central to our Colonial Networks project. On November 8, 2024, we hosted two workshops at NYU’s Center for the Humanities to discuss, critique, and generate new ideas for two project components that we are currently developing. One of these workshops, which Hannah Williams has written about …
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One of the key collaborative activities of our 2024 program for the Colonial Networks project were two workshops we ran at NYU’s Center for the Humanities on November 8, 2024. This post is about the workshop we titled Unsettling Collections: The Paris Art World and Haiti/Saint-Domingue, which brought together a group of museum curators, scholars, auction house specialists, and collections researchers to imagine new ways of telling stories about French art through digital approaches to provenance histories.
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