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Dancing Scene in the West Indies

Image credit: Tate

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This small and vividly coloured oil painting shows a predominantly female group of figures dancing in an open area of bare, sandy ground before two solidly-built two-storey buildings and a hilly, richly vegetated landscape, surmounted on the right by further solid-looking buildings, a thatched hut and a windmill. The setting is intended as the Caribbean, probably St Vincent or Dominica where the Italian-born artist Agostino Brunias was largely based from c.1764 until his death in 1796. Although the early ownership history of this work is not known, Brunias created such idealised views of life in the sugar colonies of the British West Indies to sell to plantation landowners and colonial administrators, although he also published prints in London and Paris which made his images more widely known.

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More information
Title

Dancing Scene in the West Indies

Date

1764–1796

Medium

Oil on canvas

Measurements

H 50.8 x W 66 cm

Accession number

T13869

Acquisition method

Purchased with the assistance of Tate Patrons and Tate Members, 2013

Work type

Painting

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