This oil painting shows three men trekking through a forest, while one crouches to take a rest. A man in the back is carrying a heavy load. The so-called "Black Caribs" were descendants of the indigenous Caribs and fugitive black slaves from St. Vincent and neighbouring islands. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, many of slaves came from Barbados, 100 miles to the east of St. Vincent. Agostino Brunias (1730–1796), also Brunyas, Brunais, was an Italian painter. He went to London in 1758 where he became acquainted with William Young, who was appointed to a high governmental post in West Indian territories acquired by Britain from France during the Seven Year’s War. In late 1764, Brunias accompanied Young to the Caribbean as his personal artist. Arriving in early 1765, Brunias stayed in the islands until around 1775, when he returned to England and exhibited some of his paintings. He returned to the West Indies in 1784 and remained there until his death on the island of Dominica in 1796. Although Brunias primarily resided in Dominica, he also spent time in St. Vincent and visited other islands, including Barbados, Grenada, St. Kitts and Tobago. See Lennox Honychurch, “Chatoyer's Artist: Agostino Brunias and the Depiction of St Vincent,” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 50 (2004): p.104-128; Hans Huth, “Agostino Brunias, Romano,” The Connoisseur 51 (1962): p. 265-269.

National Library of Jamaica, Institute of Jamaica, Kingston.

Brunias, Agostino

1773

English

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

Brunias002

Caribbean--St. Vincent

" Chatoyer, the Chief of the Black Charaibes in St. Vincent with his five Wives", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed February 21, 2020, http://www.slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/2431