Dominica in BrooklynPosted in Articles, Arts, Caribbean/Latin America, History, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2011-01-18 22:47Z by Steven |
The New York Times
2011-01-13
Carol Vogel, Art Reporter
The Brooklyn Museum has acquired an 18th-century painting by Agostino Brunias, a little-known London-based Italian artist. Around 1764 the British government sent Brunias to the West Indies to document one of that empire’s newest colonies, Dominica. Depicting two richly dressed mulatto women on a walk accompanied by their mother and children—all members of the island’s colonial elite—the painting also shows eight African servants on a sugar plantation.
“We have a large West Indian community,” said Richard Aste, the museum’s curator of European art. “When I saw it, it just screamed Brooklyn. We were looking for something from the 18th century, and we didn’t have anything like this.”
Mr. Aste first saw the painting in Paris in September at the booth of the London gallery Robilant & Voena at the Biennale des Antiquaires. The dealers had bought it from Sotheby’s after the painting failed to sell at auction a year ago. It had belonged to Jayne Wrightsman, a collector and a longtime trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
While the Brooklyn Museum will not say what it paid for the painting, Sotheby’s was estimating it would bring $200,000 to $300,000. The museum has titled the canvas “Free Women of Color With Their Children and Servants in a Landscape,” and it will go on view on March 7.