Oil painting of two elegantly dressed women with children, Black servants, and dogs in a tropical landscape under a stormy sky.

The image presented above is titled “Free Women of Color with Their Children and Servants in a Landscape”, an oil painting created by Agostino Brunias. The artist, Brunias, was commissioned by the British government and sent to the West Indies to paint life in the Caribbean during the seventeenth century. In the painting, you can see mixed race free women being escorted by their Black male and female slaves, along with their mixed race children being escorted by their own Black slaves. At the bottom of the composition there are three dogs, one black, one white, and one white with brown spots. In the background, a strom is brewing in the sky. This painting reveals the racial hierarchy that was happening in the British Caribbean where people that were mixed raced had a higher social status than one that was Black. Moreover, this proves how Britain established a race based slavery system throughout their colonies. See more