Camille Pissarro and Changing Esthetics in Art and Depiction of the Cultural Landscape of the Danish West Indies

Paradox in the Renderings of “Paradise”: Camille Pissarro and Changing Esthetics in Art and Depiction of the Cultural Landscape of the Danish West Indies Douglas V. Armstrong Syracuse University Abstract: Danish West Indian painter Camille Pissarro’s worked reframing visual impressions of the cultural landscape of the Caribbean and the world. This paper examines the work of impressionist painter Camille Pissarro and his inclusion use of not only light and shadow but of workers and daily life in his sketches of the port town of Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas. His work had an impact on local art and the presentation of people and landscapes. His influence and impact would have a global influence on art and our impressions of the cultural landscape. Résumé: Camille Pissarro, Le peintre Danish West Indies, recadrer travaillée les impressions visuelles du paysage culturel des Antilles et le monde. Ce papier examine le travail de peintre Camille Pissarro impressionniste et son usage d'inclusion d'allume non seulement et l'ombre mais de travailleurs et de vie quotidienne dans ses croquis de la ville de port de Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas. Son travail a eu un impact sur l'art local et la présentation de gens et de paysages. Son influence et l'impact auraient une influence globale sur l'art et nos impressions du paysage culturel. Resumen: Camille Pissarro, el pintor del Danish West Indies cambiado la impression visual del paisaje cultural del Caribe y el mundo. Este papel revisa el trabajo de pintor impresionista Camille Pissarro y suyo uso de inclusión de no sólo luz y sombra pero de trabajadores y vida cotidiana en sus dibujos del pueblo de puerto de Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas. Sus pinturas tuvieron un impacto en el arte local y la presentación de personas y paisajes. Sus influencia y el impacto tendrían una influencia global en el arte y nuestras impresiones del paisaje cultural. 362 Introduction The nineteenth century St. Thomian painter, Camille Pissarro honed his artistic skills in the Caribbean then altered world views with his impressionistic art (Figure 1).1 He and a group of painters working in France changed the composition, lighting, and subject matter of landscapes and the people captured in art. Camille Pissarro’s Caribbean perspectives changed our view of the world, and those who are represented in art, not only in the Caribbean but on a global scale. The cultural landscape of the Danish West Indies represents a setting of variation and divergence within the broader Caribbean contexts of slavery and freedom. Within this setting Camille Pissarro’s life of St. Thomas projects the nurturing of an altering view of the world that was initiated at a local level but which had a global impact. This paper will try to cross disciplinary boundaries between art and archaeology as it briefly explores the impact of the Caribbean on an artist, and in turn, the global impact of impressionist art on world views.2 To understand the Caribbean one must approach it from a multi-scaler and multi-thematic framework, akin to adjusting the lenses on binoculars, or in the case of archaeologists, the telescope on one’s total station. The cultural expression of each island is at once bound to the broader global economy, yet tied to changing policies and specific relationships of their specific colonial regimen, and both freed and bound by the specifics of their local environmental conditions and social, economic, and political spheres of interaction. In the Caribbean this is even more decisively the case than in most regions due to the nature of insularity, the complex of multi-national colonialism, the Atlantic slave trade, and the acute, abrupt, and locally defined impacts of hurricanes and earthquakes.3 Both now, and in the past, how one sees the natural and the built environment depends on one’s point of view and the questions being asked, as much as the cultural environment that is being viewed (Casid 2005; Driver and Martins 2005; Kris 2008; Tobin 2004). As archaeologists and social historians we are trying to see and reconstruct past cultural landscapes, understand the conditions of labor, and explain the dynamic cultural context of communities, how they formed, interacted, transformed, and creatively regenerated. The strength of archaeology and social history is in bringing the cultural landscape into focus at one time (the mid nineteenth century era of emancipation in the Danish West Indies) and adjusting ones lens to track the transformative processes in which the people and their communities are engaged over decades and centuries.4 1 Portions of this paper were initially written for the Harpur College Dean’s Workshop titled: Natural Environment, Built Environment: Labor and Community in Caribbean Plantation Societies, April 12-13, 2008, Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems and Civilizations, Binghamton University This workshop inspired me to look more closely at artistic images of persons of African descent created by St. Thomian native Camille Pissarro in the years leading up to and following the 1848 emancipation of enslaved laborers in the Danish West Indies (Armstrong 2008). 2 The Danish West Indies project a colonial landscape that is at once part of the broader “society of slavery” in the Caribbean (Goveia 1965: 52-53), but also one of divergence from its neighboring British, French, Spanish, and Dutch colonial counterparts (Armstrong 2003, Armstrong et. al 2008, Dookham 1994; Higman 1997). It can easily be argued that in being different the Danish West Indies were like its neighbors, as each island and each colonial regime in the Caribbean developed its own unique signature of cultural expression and political and economic infrastructures, just as each was tied by encompassing sea to the global worlds of the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries (Armstrong et. al. 2009). 3 Moreover, the islands were recurrently impacted by epidemics of both “pandemic” and local nature. 4 The Danish West Indies make up a small subset of the cultural landscape of the Caribbean, yet they project a wide range of social and economic diversity at the intersections of slavery, colonialism, and imperialism (see Goveia 1965: 52-53; Hall 1985; Higman 1995: 9; and Armstrong 2003). Today, these islands are billed as America’s “Island paradise”, having been acquired from the Danes in 1917, during an era of American Anti-Imperialist policy.4 The paradoxes of American imperialism of the 20th century simply follow upon centuries of “paradox in paradise”. I have written extensively on the archaeology of plantation slavery and free communities in the Danish West Indies. More, recently, along with Mark Hauser, David Knight and Stephan 363 In this paper I weigh my discussion towards the interpretation of artistic representations of the landscape through time in media including maps, but more decisively in the depiction of the formal and informal landscape in paintings and sketches. In the process I explore the visual presentations and what these “views” reflect in terms of the artist’s focal plane, objective or point of view and the transformative impact of locally born Camille Pissarro’s Caribbean world view on the world of art (for a broader discussion of artistic expressions in the Caribbean landscape see also Casid 2005; Driver and Martins 2005; Kris 2008; Tobin 2004). In contrast to the Danish West Indies, places like Jamaica have tens of thousands of estate maps, plans, views, and formal paintings.5 6 In the Danish West Indies there are few maps and fewer artistic representations dating to the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1733 the Danes produced a map of St. Thomas focusing on the harbor Charlotte Amalie. It illustrates the elements of entry to the harbor, fortification, and estates. Its focus is clearly related to the protection of the harbor (Armstrong et. al. 2008, Hopkins 1993). The map coincides with the timing of the local St. John’s slave rebellion and relates to a sense of the need for defense, but the primary concern of this map is related to defense of the growing port town from competing colonial fleets and the powerful pirates who had virtual uncontrolled access to the ports and shores of the Virgin Islands during this era (Lawaetz 1999).7 8 As discussed in the article Maps, Matricals, and Material Remains: (Armstrong et. al. 2008: 99-126). The three primary Danish West Indian Islands, St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John received differential treatment in their mapping related to economic interests. St. Croix, whose lands were put to work in the production of sugar cane received the most holistic attention with details of estate boundaries produced and reproduced on the maps of Johann Cronenberg and Johann von Jeagersberg in 1750, Beck in 1754, and Peter Oxholm in the 1770s (see Hopkins 1993) (Figure 2). Oxholm’s 1780 map of St. John was the first map produced depicting the entire island, but unlike St. Croix, no attempt was made to depict estate boundaries and much of his attention was to the island’s limited fortifications (Figure 3).9 For St. Thomas, Oxholm provided details of both fortifications and the growing port town of Charlotte Amalie (Figure 4). Charlotte Amalie was the site of repeated mapping and plotting and painting related to both the harbor and the thriving warehouse and commercial district. Differential attention is paid to the landscape in relation to the respective economic use of each locality.10 Beyond these maps, there Lenik, I have examined the island’s landscape in terms of maps and the implications of historical mapping of each of the Danish islands in a series of GIS studies focusing on St. John (Armstrong et. al 2008, 2009). 5 When I began research there these maps were the basis for my selection of sites for archaeological investigation.

Load more