Witnessing Slavery

By Sarah Thomas,

Book cover of Witnessing Slavery: Art and Travel in the Age of Abolition

Book description

A timely and original look at the role of the eyewitness account in the representation of slavery in British and European art

Gathering together over 160 paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints, this book offers an unprecedented examination of the shifting iconography of slavery in British and European art between 1760…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Witnessing Slavery as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

In this lavishly illustrated book, primarily about art in Jamaica but with nods to New South Wales and Britain, Sarah Thomas connects the plantation and urban world of Jamaica to the discipline of art history, giving careful analyses of painters like James Hakewill who painted scenes of plantation life designed to normalise and make more Arcadian a landscape that in fact was marked more by violence than by contentment. It speaks vividly to the silences that surround slavery on the island.

From Trevor's list on Jamaica during the period of slavery.

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