Free Women of Color with Their Children and Servants in a Landscape

About this Brooklyn Icon
The Brooklyn Museum is commemorating its 200th anniversary by spotlighting 200 standout objects in its encyclopedic collection.

Sir William Young, the British governor of Dominica in the late 18th century, brought Agostino Brunias to the Caribbean as his personal artist. Adapting the style of traditional European “conversation pieces” (informal group portraits of white aristocrats), Brunias’s commissioned, picturesque images of Caribbean life under colonialism obscured the violence of empire and slavery. In this example, Brunias depicts free and enslaved people who lived in Dominica under Britain’s colonial rule. Their skin tones and dress represent “types” of people, alluding to the island’s social, racial, and economic hierarchies that defined relations between white Europeans and people of African, Afro-Creole, Carib, or mixed-race descent.

Brunias’s paintings coincide with the historical moment when skin color and other visual and sartorial markers were becoming signifiers of human differences. Even as these images were created to affirm 18th-century British racial and social boundaries in the colonies, they reveal the contradiction and instability of those ideas. The artist’s undermining of the very concept of racial fixity, and visualization of race as fluid and socially constructed, may make this painting particularly resonant with its viewers in Brooklyn, one of the most culturally and racially diverse places in the world.

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Gallery Label

WHO IS PICTURED?

Agostino Brunias depicts people—free and enslaved—who lived under Britain’s late eighteenth-century colonial rule on the Caribbean island of Dominica. Their skin tones and dress represent “types” of people, alluding to the island’s social, racial, and economic hierarchies that defined relations between white European men and women of African, Afro-Creole, Carib, or mixed-race descent.

WHO WAS IT MADE FOR?

Sir William Young, the British governor of Dominica, brought Brunias to the Caribbean as his personal artist. Adapting the style of traditional European “conversation pieces” (informal group portraits of white aristocrats), Brunias’s commissioned picturesque images of Caribbean life under colonialism obscured the violence of empire and slavery.

WHY IS IT INTERESTING NOW?

Brunias’s paintings coincide with the historical moment when skin color and other visual and sartorial markers were becoming signifiers of human differences. Even as these works were created to affirm eighteenth-century British racial and social boundaries in the colonies, they also reveal the contradiction and instability of those same ideas. To some contemporary viewers, Brunias’s painting undermines the very idea of racial fixity, instead demonstrating race as fluid and socially constructed.

IN THE DETAILS: ON COLOR

The painting’s color palette amplifies its narrative and meaning. The figures’ proximity to racialized whiteness is underscored in their outfit colors. White textiles, with hints of yellow lace and a blue petticoat, emphasize the lighter skin of the central woman, who looks defiantly at the viewer. Her slightly darker sister wears a yellow dress and white apron and holds a red handkerchief. Notably, Brunias contrasts their hats—white for one, black for the other—further suggesting various degrees of racial mixing. Their mother’s garments are more colorful still.

Even the dogs play a part: a pair, one black, one white, stand at attention near the young boy and his uniformed attendants. Just to the left, staring up at the central woman, is a small dog with white and brown spots.