Swollen detail, or what a vessel might give: Agostino Brunias and the visual and material culture of colonial Dominica

Abstract

This essay asks how colonial visual imagery might be interrogated alongside material culture in order to recover some knowledge of the quotidian lives of the enslaved. It encourages viewing that focuses on the material traces hitherto neglected by scholars: vessels for carrying fresh water. If archaeologists have focused on the tangible remains of pots, we suggest ways in which artistic representation might also offer insights into everyday living. Detail has become a recurrent theme in Art History precisely because it offers a methodology which allows the humble things of the everyday to become the focus of attention. Here we explore attention to detail as a way of thinking anew about colonial visual culture, focussing on the work of professional artist Agostino Brunias, a long-term resident of Dominica.