Caption

This large panorama depicts Bridgetown, the principal port city of Barbados, then the most prosperous English Caribbean colony of the early eighteenth century. It was an economy based on sugar – visible through the presence of wind-powered cane mills, warehouses, wharves, and ships – and the toil of enslaved Africans – who are notably absent from the scene. The painting hung at Dyrham Park, the home of William Blathwayt (c.1649-1717), the leading colonial administrator of his age, in a house intended to project his colonially derived status and prestige.

Summary

Oil painting on canvas, A View of the port of Bridgetown Barbados with extensive shipping by an unknown early eighteenth-century artist. Believed to have been owned by William Blathwayt (?1649-1717) as Auditor General of Plantation Revenues. Likely acquired by William Blathwayt as Auditor General of Plantation Revenues; potentially listed in a sale catalogue of 1765 as 'A View of a Sea Port, Large' (Lot 14, Day 2) or related to 'A View of a Sea Port with Carriages, Horses, and Figures, Bridge-town, Barbados' (Lot 21, Day 2) or 'A Sea View, very large, with Shipping, also Figures' (Lot 30, Day 3); by descent to Justin Blathwayt (1913-2005), who sold Dyrham Park to the Ministry of Works in 1956; purchased with support from the Art Fund, Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, a fund set up by the late Hon. Simon Sainsbury, and Mr John Maynard in 2022.

Full description

Substantial in scale, this painting of Bridgetown is amongst very few known paintings depicting Barbados from the early eighteenth century. [1] It shows the second largest city in the English colonies, after Boston, and the town before it was partially destroyed by fire in 1766. [2] Composition The painting is a large panorama of Bridgetown, Barbados, looking landward showing the town and harbour beneath green hills with sugar processing windmills. Three land defences are identified with flags: James Fort to the left, Willoughby Fort in the centre, and to the right at the end of Needham’s Point lies Charles Fort jutting into Carlisle Bay. The townscape includes wharfs, stores, houses, and some substantial buildings including the Nidhe Israel Synagogue (left of centre) and St Michael’s church (right of centre). There are small rowing boats aside the shore, but no people are represented. Within the harbour are multiple armed galleons or warships, most at anchor, and flying English flags except a single Spanish ship at the centre of the composition, identifiable by the Cross of Burgundy naval, mercantile, and colonial ensign. Several ships have numerous people standing on their decks depicted in simple silhouette form, with occasional flashes of colour to indicate hats and dress. Some of the ships appear to be firing cannon in salute; they may represent a Barbados-based naval squadron or warships protecting merchant convoys. Amongst them small boats move passengers and goods in bales and barrels. Production and Dating The painting is by an unknown Anglo-Dutch or Anglo-Flemish School artist of the early eighteenth century. There is a possible association with an engraving by Johannes Kip (1653-1722) ‘A Prospect of Bridgetown in Barbados’ drawn by Samuel Copen in 1695, considered the earliest view of an English Caribbean colony, which offers a similar perspective and composition. [3] Little is known about Copen, who may be part of a Flemish ‘Coppens’ family of artists active at this date. It may be coincidental that Kip also engraved Dyrham Park for inclusion in Sir Robert Atkyn’s 'The Ancient and Present State of Glostershire' (1712), with Kip’s fee paid by William Blathwayt. [4] The date of the painting is uncertain. Between 1711 and 1717 a new tower was added to St Michael’s church to house a clock and five bells; it was constructed in stages by different contractors, and included a commission in 1715 for a 35-foot spire. [5] A tower is present in this picture, though the spire possibly not. Further, the multiplicity of Red Ensign flags featuring the St George’s Cross suggests a date before the Act of Union in 1707 and the switch to a Union Flag within the canton. The central ship uses the Cross of Burgundy, which may have been phased out at the start of the eighteenth century. However, the scene suggests there is an intended narrative based on the presence of the Spanish ship. It is not a ‘prize’ capture, given there are no additional English flags flying. This implies a moment of peace and indicates that the painting may mark the Treaty of Utrecht (1713). Patronage and Provenance The painting was likely acquired or commissioned by William Blathwayt to understand and promote colonial interests, and as such is a rare visual document. It is uncertain where it was originally displayed, possibly within the Plantation Office in Scotland Yard, Whitehall, or Blathwayt’s nearby London residence Little Wallingford House, Great Street, or ultimately at Dyrham Park, Gloucestershire. At Dyrham it was a physical manifestation of Blathwayt’s career and status to be seen alongside other colonial materials and imagery, including the use of walnut and cedar timbers imported from Virginia and Carolina, cultivated North American plants, a painting of Jamaican cacao production, and a unique bound volume of English colonial maps (featuring a map of Barbados). [6] The painting of Bridgetown left Dyrham Park in the 1950s when the last Blathwayt owner sold the house and certain contents to the Ministry of Works before transfer to the National Trust. William Blathwayt was the leading colonial administrator of his generation. [7] His career started as Plantation Office clerk from 1675, then Secretary to the Lords of Trade from 1679. He was the first Surveyor and Auditor General of Plantation Revenues (1680-1717) and subsequently member of the Board of Trade (1696-1707). His career was built upon that of his uncle Thomas Povey (c.1613-c.1705) who was an established colonial administrator of the previous generation: chair of the Council for America (1657), member of the Council of Trade (1660), Receiver-General for rents and revenues in Africa and America (1661), and on the Committee for Foreign Plantations (1661). Povey invested in colonial activity through the Royal African Company and Nova Scotia Company. As Povey’s career waned from the 1670s so grew that of his protégée William Blathwayt. Povey lived into the early eighteenth century and so his involvement and influence in colonial matters overlaps with that of his nephew. Povey sold furniture, paintings, and books to his nephew for Dyrham Park. [8] Barbados connections William Blathwayt’s professional relationship with Barbados lasted four decades. In March 1680 the Barbados Governor wrote to Blathwayt describing the island: ‘It is one great Citty adorned with gardens, and a most delightful place.’ As Auditor General he was responsible for accounting income due to the government from individual colonies, with each colony contributing part of his salary. The Barbados portion was £150 a year, although by 1711 colonists still owed Blathwayt £1,300 for a decade’s worth of unpaid contributions. Blathwayt received gratuities from colonists in Barbados seeking patronage or favour, such as his cousin, Robert Gibbs, who was a resident Deputy Auditor and sent consignments of preserved fruits. The familial association stretched back two further generations. Blathwayt’s grandfather Justinian Povey (d. c.1652) was a London-based Commissioner for the Caribbee Islands in 1637, only a decade after their first English settlement. Blathwayt’s uncle, Captain William Povey was a resident agent for his brother Thomas, Secretary to the Barbados Council (1641), and Provost Marshal (1655-60). The near century-long involvement by Poveys and Blathwayt in Barbados saw inconsistent governmental colonial policy, but also profound societal change and consequence. From the start of English colonisation in 1627 until the 1640s there existed a small subsistence economy based on indentured European labour, producing poor quality tobacco and then cotton. Colonists then started to focus on sugar production through the labour of enslaved Africans. From the 1660s Barbados produced nearly all the sugar then consumed in England – generating more trade and capital than all other English colonies combined. The population grew to over 50,000 and most of these people were enslaved Africans, who suffered hard and short lives. The painting does not overtly show slavery, but it is implicit through the proliferation of windmills used for sugarcane processing and ships for the transportation of both people and agricultural cargoes. [9] Rupert Goulding, November 2022 Prepared with the generous assistance of Dr Phillip Emanuel, Dr Peter van der Merwe, Professor Louis Nelson and Dr Gabriella de la Rosa. Notes [1] A similar painting is in the Barbados Museum and Historical Society collection: Governor Robinson going to church, by an unknown early eighteenth-century artist (oil on canvas, 124 x 297 cm). Interestingly, a picture was sold from Dyrham Park in 1765 with a similar description: A View of a Sea Port with Carriages, Horses, and Figures, Bridge-town, Barbados (Lot 21, Day 2) – to note the similarity in canvas size. [2] See Frederick Smith and Karl Watson, ‘Urbanity, Sociability, and Commercial Exchange in the Barbados Sugar Trade: A comparative Colonial Archaeological Perspective on Bridgetown, Barbados in the Seventeenth Century’ in International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 2009, Vol. 13(1), pp. 63-79. [3] Examples found within the Library of Congress and John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. [4] NT 452643 [5] Jacob Eliezer Pomerantz. Building the Bridge: Labor and Colonial Governance in Seventeenth-Century Bridgetown, Barbados. PhD Thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 2021, pp. 186-188. [6] NT 456464; Gloucestershire Archives D1799/E234; NT 453740; The ‘Blathwayt Atlas’ is a collection of 48 maps bound in 1683 by William Blathwayt, sold from Dyrham Park in 1911 and acquired by the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. [7] See Gertrude Jacobsen. William Blathwayt, A Late Seventeenth Century English Administrator. Yale University Press, 1932.