A Negroes Dance in the Island of Dominica
A Negroes Dance in the Island of Dominica
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A Negroes Dance in the Island of Dominica
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Agostino Brunias

A Negroes Dance in the Island of Dominica

$69.00 USD
Sale price  $69.00 USD Regular price 
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About this Work

Year 1779
Location Dominica

One of Brunias's most celebrated and widely reproduced compositions, and one of the most viscerally alive. Two fighters — known informally as "French" and "English," a nod to Dominica's contested colonial history — face off with sticks at the center of the frame, a crowd of onlookers pressing in on all sides. A European figure watches from the doorway of a thatched house at the left — thought to be Brunias himself.

The scene depicts Bwa, the stick-fighting tradition widespread across the Caribbean, almost certainly taking place on the glacis — the stone platform used to dry coffee where enslaved people gathered on Sundays and holidays. A banana tree stands beyond, its presence in the Americas, like the people depicted, originating in West Africa.

Brunias was working for the island's plantocracy, and his paintings deliberately avoid the realities of plantation labor — presenting instead a world of movement, color, and cultural vitality. That framing has a complicated history, but it doesn't diminish what survives: a detailed, energetic record of a tradition that would evolve into the stick-fighting culture still practiced in the Caribbean today.

Agostino Brunias

Meet the Artist

Agostino Brunias

Agostino Brunias was a Roman-born painter who trained at the Accademia di San Luca before making his way to England, where he worked under architect Robert Adam. In 1764 he left London for the British West Indies, eventually settling in Dominica, where he spent much of the rest of his life. His paintings and engravings of Caribbean creole culture and indigenous Carib life remain among the most significant visual records of 18th-century West Indian society.
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