Lot Essay
Apart from two large (635 x 1695mm. and 527 x 1264mm.) panoramic watercolours of Sir Patrick Blake's Sandy Point Estate in the Island of Saint Christopher (St. Kitts) which have been convincingly given to Brunias on the grounds of style and his known connections with Blake (his engraving of 1780 'The West Indies Flower Girl' is dedicated to him), the present two hitherto unknown watercolours (lots 5 and 6) are the only works on paper to appear which can be attributed to the artist and the present figure the only one which relates directly to Brunias's engraved works. The figure 'Ma Commère' ('The old gossip') appears in reverse in the posthumous stipple engraving by Brown (published by J.P. Thompson, London, 1804 'The Linen Market at Santo Domingo', see illustration). The only other documented works on paper by Brunias are those, now lost, included in Messrs. Adam's sale in these Rooms, 13 June 1785, lot 33.
Little has been published on Brunias since the French ethnologist E.-T. Hamy's subjective discussion of his pictures and engravings (E.-T. Hamy, Alexander Brunias, Peintre Ethnographe de la fin du XVIIIe siècle, Courte Notice sur son Oeuvre, L'Anthropologie, I, 1890 pp. 49-56). He is recorded in Rome from 1848 where he has a student at the Academia de San Luca and was employed as a draughtsman by Robert Adam in 1756. He returned with Adam to England in 1758 and continued to work with Adam as an architectural draughtsman. Two of his five paintings to decorate the Breakfast Room at Kedleston Hall are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. He exhibited pictures at the Free Society of Artists in 1762 and 1763 and two drawings in 1770 submitted "From the West Indies". It is thought he accompanied Sir William Young, the first British Governor of Dominica, to the West Indies in 1770, and his work from this time until his death in Dominica in 1796 concentrates on subjects in the West Indies, in particular in Dominica, St. Vincent, Saint Christopher and Barbados, many painted for the rich white oligarchs who ran estates on the islands, such as Sir Patrick Blake and Sir Ralph Payne. Three Dominican subjects were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1777 and 1779 at a time when Brunias may have returned to London to prepare editions of engravings after his paintings in 1779 and 1780 (an undated suite of engravings was also published by Depeueille in Paris and posthumous publications followed in London in 1804 and 1810).
Brunias's work is an important record of life in the Lesser Antilles in the second half of the eighteenth century depicting the islands at the zenith of British military and commercial domination. Unlike Thomas Hearne, with whom Brunias has much in common (Hearne followed Brunias to the West Indies in 1771 to commemorate Sir Ralph Payne's stewardship of the Leeward Islands in a series of twenty large topographical watercolours, four of which were sold in these Rooms, 15 July 1994, lots 14-17), Brunias's surviving pictures reveal that he became primarily a figure painter in the West Indies, concentrating on the new culture of the mulatto, born from the mixture of European, African and Carib races. Hence his fascincation in the nineteenth century for French ethnologists such as Hamy: 'tout l'ensemble de l'oeuvre de notre peintre ethnographe est d'ailleurs ... d'une exactitude quasi scientifique, dont ne se préoccupaient guère les peintres de 1780. Que l'on souvienne, que Camper travaillait à cette même date, à la Dissertation sur les variétés naturelles qui caractérisent la physionomie des hommes des divers climats et des différents âges, où l'on peut lire les critiques si justes sur l'ignorance des maitres de la peinture moderne en matière d'ethnographie ... Brunias, dont j'ai eu la satisfaction d'exhumer l'oeuvre entièrement oubliée, mérite de prendre une modest place ... sur la liste des graveurs qui ont introduit l'ethnographie dans le domaine de l'art. Il est, en tout cas, le premier, par ordre de date, de ces artistes voyageurs si nombreux depuis lors et parfois si habiles qui ont consacré une partie du leur talent à représenter d'après nature, en toute sincerité, les divers aspects de l'humanité exotique.' (E.T. Harry, op. cit., pp. 55-6). While Hamy contines to praise his 'verité ethnographique' over that of Cook's artists and his contemporaries, Hodges and Webber, Brunias's pictures have much in common with the engrossing and theatrical work of English painters steeped in academic and classical tradition who travelled to the New World and the South Seas in the second half of the eighteenth century
Little has been published on Brunias since the French ethnologist E.-T. Hamy's subjective discussion of his pictures and engravings (E.-T. Hamy, Alexander Brunias, Peintre Ethnographe de la fin du XVIIIe siècle, Courte Notice sur son Oeuvre, L'Anthropologie, I, 1890 pp. 49-56). He is recorded in Rome from 1848 where he has a student at the Academia de San Luca and was employed as a draughtsman by Robert Adam in 1756. He returned with Adam to England in 1758 and continued to work with Adam as an architectural draughtsman. Two of his five paintings to decorate the Breakfast Room at Kedleston Hall are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. He exhibited pictures at the Free Society of Artists in 1762 and 1763 and two drawings in 1770 submitted "From the West Indies". It is thought he accompanied Sir William Young, the first British Governor of Dominica, to the West Indies in 1770, and his work from this time until his death in Dominica in 1796 concentrates on subjects in the West Indies, in particular in Dominica, St. Vincent, Saint Christopher and Barbados, many painted for the rich white oligarchs who ran estates on the islands, such as Sir Patrick Blake and Sir Ralph Payne. Three Dominican subjects were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1777 and 1779 at a time when Brunias may have returned to London to prepare editions of engravings after his paintings in 1779 and 1780 (an undated suite of engravings was also published by Depeueille in Paris and posthumous publications followed in London in 1804 and 1810).
Brunias's work is an important record of life in the Lesser Antilles in the second half of the eighteenth century depicting the islands at the zenith of British military and commercial domination. Unlike Thomas Hearne, with whom Brunias has much in common (Hearne followed Brunias to the West Indies in 1771 to commemorate Sir Ralph Payne's stewardship of the Leeward Islands in a series of twenty large topographical watercolours, four of which were sold in these Rooms, 15 July 1994, lots 14-17), Brunias's surviving pictures reveal that he became primarily a figure painter in the West Indies, concentrating on the new culture of the mulatto, born from the mixture of European, African and Carib races. Hence his fascincation in the nineteenth century for French ethnologists such as Hamy: 'tout l'ensemble de l'oeuvre de notre peintre ethnographe est d'ailleurs ... d'une exactitude quasi scientifique, dont ne se préoccupaient guère les peintres de 1780. Que l'on souvienne, que Camper travaillait à cette même date, à la Dissertation sur les variétés naturelles qui caractérisent la physionomie des hommes des divers climats et des différents âges, où l'on peut lire les critiques si justes sur l'ignorance des maitres de la peinture moderne en matière d'ethnographie ... Brunias, dont j'ai eu la satisfaction d'exhumer l'oeuvre entièrement oubliée, mérite de prendre une modest place ... sur la liste des graveurs qui ont introduit l'ethnographie dans le domaine de l'art. Il est, en tout cas, le premier, par ordre de date, de ces artistes voyageurs si nombreux depuis lors et parfois si habiles qui ont consacré une partie du leur talent à représenter d'après nature, en toute sincerité, les divers aspects de l'humanité exotique.' (E.T. Harry, op. cit., pp. 55-6). While Hamy contines to praise his 'verité ethnographique' over that of Cook's artists and his contemporaries, Hodges and Webber, Brunias's pictures have much in common with the engrossing and theatrical work of English painters steeped in academic and classical tradition who travelled to the New World and the South Seas in the second half of the eighteenth century