Belisario: Sketches of Character: A Historical Biography of a Jamaican Artist
2009; Volume: 43; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0047-2263
Autores Tópico(s)Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy
ResumoJackie Ranston, Belisario: Sketches of Character: A Historical Biography of a Jamaican Artist, Kingston: Mill Press, 2008, xix + 409 pp.The art of Isaac Mendes Belisario has long been prominent in the visual iconography of Jamaica. His images have been studied intensively for histories of dance and dress but they have also been used to illustrate general histories, and coopted to popular culture and commerce. Best known are figures from Belisario's Sketches of Character, in Illustration of the Habits, Occupation, and Costume of the Negro Population, in the Island of Jamaica, published in parts in Kingston in 1837. most familiar of these coloured lithographs, drawn after nature, are elaborately costumed, carnivalesque images taken from urban Christmas-time festivities that flourished in the final decades of slavery: Set Girls, Jackin-the-Green, John Canoe characters and musicians. However, the visual familiarity of these figures has rarely been matched by an awareness of Belisario's accompanying descriptive texts or of the art he produced beyond the Sketches. Even less has been known of the life of the artist and the reasons for his interest in the subjects he chose to illustrate.Carefully excavated in Jackie Ranston's new book, Belisario emerges with a historical significance previously unrecognized. Born in Jamaica in 1794 of Jewish parents, Belisario's father was a Kingston merchant and slave trader. In 1803 the young Belisario was sent to live with the family of his grandfather in London, where he somehow escaped the world of business to embark on an artistic career. By 1815 he was exhibiting his paintings at the Royal Academy and the Society of Painters in Oils and Water-Colours. He returned to Jamaica in December 1834 and set up a studio. He stayed in Jamaica long enough to produce the Sketches but was off to London again in 1839, where he lived with his sisters for a few years, only to return to Kingston in time to experience the great fire that destroyed parts of the city in 1843. His drawings of scenes from the fire, which showed much close observation of domestic detail, were used by Adolphe Duperly in the following year to produce a series of lithographic prints. In 1846, or soon thereafter, Belisario returned again to London, where he died of tuberculosis in 1849.Ranston carried out research in many places over many years, following Belisario wherever his documentary trail led. biographical portrait she paints is richly detailed and indeed sometimes so dense that it is difficult to keep up with the peripatetic Belisario. A short biographical sketch or chronology would have been helpful. As with most complex family histories, supported by an extensive documentary record, the story diverges many times from the life of Belisario himself to follow lines of kinship and association, including Caribbean territories other than Jamaica. As a member of the Jewish community, Belisario's networks were deep and ramified.Ranston's Belisario is a massive, sumptuous volume, with a high density of illustrations, many of them visually attractive. Puzzles remain, as they should. There is apparently no portrait of Belisario himself. Several of the figures painted by Belisario remain unknown characters, as, for example, the untitled 1839 watercolour of a bespectacled man apparently about to preach (reproduced as the frontispiece), and The Unknown Man (p. 277), with a copy of the 1836 Report from the Select Committee on Negro Apprenticeship clearly visible at his feet. …
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