Yale Center for British Art

Creator:
Agostino Brunias, 1728–1796, Italian, active in Britain (1758–70; 1777-80s)
Title:
Linen Market, Dominica
Date:
ca. 1780
Materials & Techniques:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
19 5/8 × 27 inches (49.8 × 68.6 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:
Typeset inscription on dealer’s label on back of painting: "Collection of Governor Young of Antigua"
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1981.25.76
Classification:
Paintings
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Subject Terms:
merchants | vegetables | buildings | stalls | sea | linen (material) | fruit | corncob | selling | men | women | servants | children | Creole | genre subject | parasols | costume | chairs | stools | produce stand | boats | vase | basket | umbrellas | market (event)
Associated Places:
West Indies | Lesser Antilles | Dominica | Roseau
Currently On View:
Not on view
Exhibition History:
The Black Figure in the European Imaginary (Cornell Fine Arts Museum, 2017-01-20 - 2017-05-15)

The Interwoven Globe - Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500-1800 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013-09-10 - 2014-01-05)

Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn (New York Historical Society, 2011-11-11 - 2012-04-15)

Wilde Americk - Discovery and Exploration of the New World, 1500-1850 (Yale Center for British Art, 2001-09-27 - 2001-09-27)
Publications:
Amanda Michaela Bagneris, Coloring the Caribbean : Agostino Brunias and the Painting of Race in the British West Indes, 1765-1800 [PhD Dissertation, Harvard University], Cambridge, MA, 2009, p.19, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global

Mia L. Bagneris, Agostino Brunias : Capturing the Carribean [sic] (c. 1770-1800), , Robilant + Voena, London, UK, 2010, pp. 30-33, fig. 14, NJ18 B84652 +B34 2010 Oversize (YCBA)

Mia L. Bagneris, Colouring the Caribbean : Race and the Art of Agostino Brunias, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2018, pp. 182-183, 188, 190-191, 199, 201, fig. 47, NJ18.B84652 B34 2018 (YCBA)

Thomas Bender, Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn, D. Giles Limited, London, 2011, pp. 132-133, 86 D11 R48 (WALPOLE)

David Bindman, Representing Race in the Eighteenth-Century Caribbean : Brunias in Dominica and St Vincent, Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 51, Baltimore, MD, pp. 14-15, NX452 E54 (YCBA)

David Bindman, The History of British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2008, pp.106-109 (vol. 2), pl. 60, N6761 +H57 2008 Oversize (YCBA)

David Bindman, The Image of the Black in Western Art : From the " Age of Discovery" to the Age of Abolition, , vol. 3, part 3, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2010, pp. 273-74, fig. 264, N8217.B535 I42 2010+ (YCBA) Citations are to Vol. 3, Part 3

Steeve O. Buckridge, African Lace - Bark in the Caribbean : The Construction of Race, Class and Gender, Bloomsbury, London, New York, 2016, p. 41, fig. 1.3, GN432 B84 2016

Adrienne L. Childs, Imagining Blacks in European art, Fine Art Connoisseur, 14 issue 2, Streamline, Boca Raton, Fla, p. 77, V 2837 (YCBA)

Adrienne L. Childs, The Black Figure in the European Imaginary, London; Winter Park, FL, 2017, pp. 29, 48, fig. 13, pl. 3, N8232 +C59 2017 Oversize (YCBA)

Christie's sale catalogue : Topographical Pictures, Drawings, Watercolours, Prints and Sculptures, particularly of American, Canadian, African, Eastern and Australasian Interest : 20 November 1986, Christie's, South Kensington, November 20, 1986, pp. 10-11, Lot 11, Auction Catalogues (YCBA)

Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 44-45, N590.2 .A83 (YCBA)

Martina Droth, Britain in the world : Highlights from the Yale Center for British Art in honor of Amy Meyers, Yale University Press, New Haven, London, 2019, p. 80, N6761 .Y33 2019 (LC) (YCBA)

Natasha Eaton, Mimesis Across Empires : Artworks and Networks in India, 1765-1860, , Duke University Press, Durham; London, 2013, pp. 79, 80, fig. 2.2, N7303 .E28 2013 (YCBA)

Elisabeth Fairman, Wilde Americk : Discovery and Exploration of the New World, , New Haven, 2001, p.15, V 0857 (YCBA)

Kay Dian Kriz, Slavery, sugar, and the culture of refinement : picturing the British West Indies, 1700-1840, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, p. 36 (detail), p. 56, N8214.5.W38 K75 2008 (LC) (YCBA)

Madeleine Dobie, Trading Places: Colonization and Slavery in Eighteenth-Century French Culture, , Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2010, pp. 120, 121, fig. 15, PQ265 D63X 2010 (SML)

Louis P. Nelson, Architecture and Empire in Jamaica, Yale University Press, New Haven, p. 182, fig. 6.26, NA809 +.N457 2016 Oversize (YCBA)

Felicity Nussbaum, The Global Eighteenth Century, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Md., 2003, p.197, fig.13.2, D287 G56 2003 (YCBA)

Sarah Caitlin Parsons, Imagining Empire : Slavery and British Visual Culture, 1765-1807 [PhD Dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara], Santa Barbara, California, 2000, pp. 229-233, 255, 279, 352, fig. 73, available online via ProQuest

Amelia Peck, Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500-1800, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, 2013, p.285, NK8806 +.I58 2013 Oversize (YCBA)

Danielle Catherine Skeehan, Creole Domesticity : Women, Commerce, and Kinship in Early Atlantic Writing [PhD Dissertation, Northeastern University], Boston, 2013, pp.148-155, available online via ProQuest

Sarah Thomas, Envisaging a future for slavery : Agostino Brunias and the imperial politics of labor and reproduction, Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 52, Baltimore, MD, Fall 2018, pp. 115-33, NX452 E54 (YCBA)

Beth Fowkes Tobin, Picturing Imperial Power : Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth Century British Painting, Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, 1999, pp. 152, 160, 163-164, 170, fig. 31, ND466 759 1999 (YCBA)

Kemble Widmer, In Plain Sight : Discovering the Furniture of Nathaniel Gould, The Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, 2014, pp. 74, 75-76, fig. 7 ("Desks took on Bord"), NK2439.G68 +A4 2014 Oversize (YCBA)
Provenance:
Possibly commissioned by Sir William Young (ca. 1724-1788), governor of Dominica, from Agostino Brunias (1728-1796), the artist, ca. 1780 [1] [2]; … ; acquired by James Graham & Sons, Madison Avenue, New York, by 1960; purchased by Paul Mellon (1907-1999), October 1960; by whom given to the Yale Center for British Art, 1981. Notes: --- [1] Possibly the painting exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1777 (no. 35) as "A Sunday negro’s market in the island of Dominica." --- [2] The dealer’s invoice says without citing a source that the painting was "Painted for Governor Young of Antigua. The dealer’s label on the stretcher bar goes so far as to say "Collection of Governor Young of Antigua." Young owned other paintings by Brunias, so this must remain a possibility. ---
Link:
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:586