Artwork of the month: Philip Wickstead – Portrait of Benjamin and Mary Pusey (c1775)
veerlepoupeye.com
This week, I start a new series in which I explore and contextualize famous and less well-known works of Jamaican art. The subject of this week’s column is Philip Wickstead’s Portrait of Benjamin and Mary Pusey, which has been tentatively dated circa 1775. The portrait depicts a well-known Jamaican planter couple, in what is presumably the setting of their great house. At 39 by 49 inches, the oil on canvas painting is, incidentally, also one of the largest, if not the largest colonial-era painting in the National Gallery of Jamaica’s collection.
The painting entered the collection of the Institute of Jamaica in 1944, along with a contemporary portrait of Richard and Jane Pusey, as a gift of one Miss Carolyn Nias, in appreciation of Jamaica’s contribution to World War II. The two paintings were exhibited at the National Gallery of Jamaica in 1975, in its seminal Five Centuries of Art in Jamaica exhibition, which was the first general historical survey of Jamaican art. The paintings were transferred to the National Gallery’s collection in 1976, along with other colonial-era art holdings of the Institute and the Portrait of Benjamin and Mary Pusey has since, about 1985, been on permanent view in the historical galleries. It is a classic and very instructive example of plantation era art.
Phillip Wickstead, an English painter who had apparently been a pupil of Johan Zoffany (1733-1810) in Rome, came to Jamaica around 1773 under the patronage of the Jamaican planter and writer William Beckford of Sommerley, along with the landscape painter George Robertson (1748?-1788). Wickstead’s date of birth is unknown, but he probably belonged to the same generation as Robertson. While Robertson left Jamaica after completing his series of landscape paintings, which were subsequently engraved in England, Wickstead stayed on for a longer period and sought to become a planter. He was not successful, however, and apparently started drinking. Several of his paintings were apparently destroyed in the Great Hurricane of October 1780, which caused significant damage in western Jamaica, and brought ruin to Beckford’s properties near Savanna-la-Mar. It is uncertain whether Wickstead stayed in Jamaica until the end of his life, but he died in 1790, probably still a relatively young man.
Wickstead was primarily a portraitist and his Portrait of Benjamin and Mary Pusey is one of several planter family portraits that have survived to the present day. Sources, such as Beckford, also mention genre paintings, depicting the enslaved at work in the sugar cane fields, but to my knowledge, none of these have survived. Although he obviously had significant support from the local plantocracy, Wickstead was not a prolific painter. Beckford characterized him as “a man whose powers of painting were considerably weakened by his natural indolence, and most of all, by his wonderful eccentricity of character… Had he cultivated his profession with as much zeal as he displayed in his friendship, and had been as industrious as he was honest, he might have finished many works in Jamaica, which would not only have added to the weight of his purse, but to the durability of his fame.”
Wickstead’s presumed teacher, Zoffany, was a German neoclassical painter, who was active in England, Italy, and India. Zoffany is best known as an exponent of the “conversation piece” genre, an informal group portrait that may be set indoors or in landscape, with the persons depicted engaged in genteel conversation and social interaction. The genre was fashionable in the 18th century and associated with the so-called Age of Enlightenment, which privileged rational thought, science, democracy, liberty, and individual empowerment (for those who could afford it). The Enlightenment philosophy was closely associated with colonialism, and with the notion that “enlightened” Europe was predestined to bring civilization to the “savage” lands and that this was somehow in the best interests of the colonial subjects.
The conversation pieces of the eighteenth century extolled those values, and the Portrait of Benjamin and Mary Pusey is in fact an example of the genre. It is one of several such works by Wickstead. It shows Benjamin and Mary Pusey in what is presumably their great house. The Puseys, who were sugar cane planters, had properties in the Parish of Vere (now part of Clarendon), Westmoreland and St Andrew and initially lived at Pusey Hall in Vere and later at Cherry Hill in what is now Cherry Gardens. Researching this historical context in more detail is beyond the scope of this short article but we can get a sense of the Pusey family’s wealth by the recorded fact that the successors at the Pusey Hall Estate in 1835, during the Emancipation period, made a claim for the “loss” of 236 slaves and were compensated 5,018 pounds, 7 shillings and 11 pence, the modern-day equivalent of more than half-a-million pounds. Clearly, the family was deeply embroiled in slavery.
The portrait depicts Benjamin apparently lecturing his enraptured spouse on the oval object that is placed on chair which is used as a makeshift easel and held by a house slave. Presumably the object is a coat of arms, perhaps the family crest, or a painting. To the right of Mary, a small, whippet-like dog can also be seen. Although the landscape beyond the window or veranda is scarcely defined, it appears that we are near to the sea. The setting suggests grandeur and wealth, and there are books, papers, and a globe, which suggest that Benjamin Pusey was a man of education. A landscape painting is partially visible in the background along with heavy drapery of red fabric and there is a carpet that looks oriental. The Puseys, and the anonymous house slave whose features are barely defined, are all dressed elaborately, with multi-layered clothes and powdered wigs that appear to be utterly unsuitable for the tropics, but they would of course have worn their finest for a formal portrait. The scene is lit with bright natural light, which comes in from the left through the doorway, and creates a spotlight effect of which Benjamin Pusey is the main beneficiary.
Benjamin Pusey is, literally and symbolically, at the centre of the painting, almost like a sun around which the other people, dog, and objects in the painting orbit. His wife also receives significant attention but her off-centre position identifies her as being of secondary importance. The features of the house slave are underdefined and everything about the manner in which he has been positioned and represented signals that he is inconsequential. As my students at the Edna Manley College have scathingly noted, he is about as important in the painting as the furniture and the pet dog. The entire painting, first and foremost, asserts Benjamin Pusey’s power and importance, as a man in control of his world. There is, however, also a curious caricatural quality about how Benjamin Pusey is represented. While Mary is more classically idealized, the rotund, pot-bellied, and rosy-faced Benjamin Pusey is a rather comical, pompous figure, whose features and animated pose make him look like a giant baby. Perhaps the artist is, advertently or not, alluding to common views about plantation culture, which was often derided in England as demonstrative and aspirational and typical of the newly rich.
Technically, the portrait is not really a great painting, although there are beautiful details. While some of this may be the result of ill-advised past restoration efforts, detail is lacking where it could be expected, for instance in the oval object. There are also spatial and anatomical discrepancies: Mrs Pusey, for instance, does not quite seem to sit in the same space as her husband and there are similar issues with the positioning of the house slave and chair. Beckford may have been correct in his assessment that Wickstead was a talented but lazy painter. There are however a few other paintings that suggest that Wickstead could do better.
In 2019, a work titled as The Artist Sketching in Jamaica, was sold at Christie’s in 2019 for 10,000 pounds. In this work, Wickstead is depicted while drawing, leaning against a tree. He is accompanied by a female figure whose right arm is draped around his shoulders and there is a big dog at their feet. The scene is set in a tropical landscape with a plantation-style cottage and hills in the background. While the posing of the figures is stiff and contrived, the composition is quite daring and innovative – the artist is, for instance, seen in profile, which is unusual in self-portraits. The work has an intimate, personal quality that is missing from Wickstead’s other surviving works, and its sensitive style and mood suggests early Romanticism rather than the Neoclassical era. Perhaps this was the sort of painting Wickstead really wanted to make if he would have been able to paint for himself rather than his clients.
Dr Veerle Poupeye is an art historian specialized in art from the Caribbean. She lectures at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica, and works as an independent curator, writer, researcher, and cultural consultant. Her personal blog can be found at veerlepoupeye.com.
