This picture is entitled "Villagers Merry Making in the island of St. Vincent, with Dancers and Musicians, A Landscape with Huts on a Hill." Romanticised houses for the enslaved can be seen on the left and in the background. The print shown here (slide of print, courtesy of Kenneth Bilby) is from an oil painting located in the National Library of Jamaica. A version of this painting, with some similar figures, is published in Hugh Honour, The Image of the Black in Western Art (Menil Foundation, Harvard University Press, 1989), vol. 4, pt. 1, p.33, fig. 3, titled "Scene with Dancing in the West Indies, ca. 1770-80."
Credit/copyright: Dance, St. Vincent, West Indies, ca. 1775; Image Reference Bilby-5, as shown onwww.slaveryimages.org, sponsored by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the University of Virginia Library.
Themes
Life on the Plantation
Emancipation
The personal accounts of former slaves were incredibly important in strengthening the case for abolition... Read more...