This lithograph shows a man covered in soot, wearing tattered clothes, carrying several brooms and smoking a pipe. Belisario explained how the sweeper cleaned "the typical kitchen-chimney with its covered top, as a protection to the fire during the heavy falls of rain." Noting that "the preferred wood used in kitchens is the cashew, the inhabitants of Kingston are by law obliged to have their chimneys frequently swept, a precaution highly requisite in a city where the houses are shingled." Isaac Mendes Belisario (1795–1849) was a Jamaican artist of Jewish descent and active in Kingston Jamaica around British emancipation in 1833. The image shown here, as well as others of “John-Canoes,” was drawn from life by Belisario in 1836. This lithograph is one of twelve originally published in three parts, four plates at a time.

Isaac Mendes Belisario, Sketches of character, in illustration of the habits, occupation, and costume of the Negro population, in the island of Jamaica: drawn after nature, and in lithography (Kingston, Jamaica: Published by the artist, 1837-1838).

Belisario, Isaac Mendes

English

Image is in the public domain. Metadata is available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

Belisario09

Caribbean--Jamaica--Kingston

"Chimneysweeper", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed March 20, 2023, http://www.slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/2315