Prospects of Empire: Slavery and Ecology in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain

Idyllic Landscapes

Thomas Vivares (bap. 1744) after George Robertson (ca. 1748–1788)

A View in the Island of Jamaica, of Roaring River Estate, belonging to William Beckford Esqr. near Savannah la Marr

Etching with hand coloring

Published 25 March 1778 by John Boydell

 

William Beckford, born in Jamaica in 1744, inherited his father’s properties there, including four sugar plantations, upon which nearly 1,000 enslaved persons labored. A supporter of the arts, he brought to Jamaica the landscape painter George Robertson, who produced depictions of the island, including this view of Beckford’s sugar plantation Roaring River. The work evokes an idyllic space, devoid of the violence that undergirded plantation life. The artist minimizes the laboring bodies, such that they blend in with the landscape, and positions the sugar works at a distance. Such imagery echoes Beckford’s literary depictions in his book A Descriptive Account of the Island of Jamaica (1790). Beckford also took interest in the sciences and counted the natural historian Sir Joseph Banks among his friends.

Agostino Brunias (1728–1796)

West Indian Women of Color, with a Child and Black Servant, ca. 1780

Oil on canvas

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

Agostino Brunias (1728–1796)

A Leeward Islands Carib family outside a Hut, ca. 1780

Oil on canvas

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

Agostino Brunias (1728–1796)

Planter and his Wife, with a Servant, ca. 1780

Oil on canvas

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

Agostino Brunias (1728–1796)

A West Indian Flower Girl and Two other Free Women of Color, ca. 1769

Oil on canvas

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

 

In 1492 the Spanish, led by Christopher Columbus, were the first Europeans to invade the Caribbean. Before importing enslaved African labor, colonial powers sought to enslave, forcibly remove, and murder indigenous peoples, while simultaneously relying on their knowledge of local ecologies. The works of Italian-born painter Agostino Brunias, who traveled to the British West Indies, erase the violence that permeated its landscapes. They reflect competing prospects; here, he depicts indigenous persons who faced dispossession, the white male planter’s colonizing gesture versus that of the woman of color, and a flower girl earning her own living from the land.

Artist unknown

The Farm and Sugar Factory at Halse Hall, Clarendon, Jamaica, ca. 1780

Watercolor and graphite

Inscribed in graphite, upper left: “Mona Liguanea”

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

Agostino Brunias (1728–1796)

A Negroes Dance in the Island of Dominica, 1779

Stipple engraving and etching

Published 15 February 1779 by the Proprietor N

 

Army officer Thomas Halse built Halse Hall on land awarded to him by Oliver Cromwell for his role in wresting Jamaica from Spanish colonizers in 1655. Sugar works lie at a distance; provision grounds, assigned with the expectation that the enslaved could partially feed themselves, are foregrounded. A surplus of crops could be sold in the market, but paucity meant starvation. Brunias’s print portrays these grounds as a site of celebration.