Dance, St. Vincent, West Indies, ca. 1775

This picture is entitled “Villagers Merry Making in the island of St. Vincent, with Dancers and Musicians, A Landscape with Huts on a Hill.” Romanticised houses for the enslaved can be seen on the left and in the background. The print shown here (slide of print, courtesy of Kenneth Bilby) is from an oil painting located in the National Library of Jamaica. A version of this painting, with some similar figures, is published in Hugh Honour, The Image of the Black in Western Art (Menil Foundation, Harvard University Press, 1989), vol. 4, pt. 1, p.33, fig. 3, titled “Scene with Dancing in the West Indies, ca. 1770-80.”