An ongoing research collaboration between Yale, the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, and the National Trust, UK, explores the connections among paintings depicting seventeenth-century Barbados.
Analysis of A View of Bridge Town and Carlisle Bay in Barbadoes with the Governor Going to Church Attended by his Guards, photo by YCBA staff
March 12, 2025
Kendall Francis, Assistant Paintings Conservator, and Edward Town, Assistant Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, Yale Center for British Art (YCBA), recently returned from a research trip to Barbados, where they were joined by Richard Hark, Senior Conservation Scientist and Anikó Bezur, Wallace S. Wilson Director, Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage (IPCH), Yale University. Together this team of two conservation scientists, one conservator, and one curator collaborated with colleagues at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society (BMHS) to perform technical analysis and share the research related to works from the museums’ collections, most significantly a painting from the BMHS titled A View of Bridge Town and Carlisle Bay in Barbadoes with the Governor Going to Church Attended by his Guards.
This trip stems from a significant collaborative project between the two institutions at Yale, the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, and the UK’s National Trust, and formalized a reciprocal and ongoing relationship between these institutions. This collaborative project focuses on the research, conservation, and analysis of three of the earliest surviving panoramic paintings of Barbados located in each institution.
The three paintings at the center of this research demonstrate aspects of British colonial rule in Barbados in the seventeenth century. A View of the Port of Bridgetown, Barbados with Extensive Shipping is a panoramic picture of Bridgetown, the primary port city of island. Recently re-acquired by the National Trust on behalf of Dyrham Park, Wiltshire, this large painting was likely acquired or commissioned by William Blathwayt (c.1649–1717), as a document of British colonial conquests abroad. The painting shows wind-powered cane mills, warehouses, wharves, and ships, as seen from the sea, and is strikingly similar in composition to a painting in the collection of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society titled A View of Bridge Town and Carlisle Bay in Barbadoes with the Governor Going to Church Attended by his Guards by an unknown artist. The former is a view of Barbados, seen from the interior of the island. A record of the sale of a painting with an analogous description from Dyrham Park in 1765 suggests that these two works hung together at Blathwayt’s home.
The Island of Barbados, purchased by YCBA founder Paul Mellon, portrays the island’s sugar plantation economy founded on the enslavement of trafficked African and Indigenous people. The painting, currently attributed to the Dutch artist Isaac Sailmaker (1633–1721), shows a birds-eye view of the island with ships arriving and departing. Tiny figures scattered across the landscape, whose visibility was greatly enhanced by Francis’s recent conservation treatment, reveal the island’s diverse population, including enslaved laborers under the supervision of white owners. While there are corresponding printed maps that seem to have informed this view, there are no other early surviving paintings of Barbados or other British-controlled islands in the Caribbean from this time.
Isaac Sailmaker, The Island of Barbados, ca. 1694, oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
The current locations of these three paintings—Dyrham, New Haven, and Bridgetown—point to three distinct places with intertwined histories. Barbados was colonized by the British in 1625, and by the middle of the seventeenth century, a thriving trade relationship had been established between colonial Connecticut and early populations of the Caribbean. Produce grown in Middletown, Wethersfield, and other nearby towns was sent to Barbados to feed the enslaved populations who worked on sugar plantations. Sugar, rum, and molasses was, in turn, sent back to the American colonies in New England, as well as places in Britain to satisfy a growing and insatiable demand for these commodities. Many Algonquin and other Indigenous people were trafficked from Connecticut and other New England colonies and enslaved in Barbados.
The impetus for this collaboration began more than two years ago when Rupert Goulding, the National Trust Senior National Curator for Research and the South West, began correspondence with the YCBA and the BMHS regarding the three early views of Barbados in each institution’s collection. When Kendall Francis joined the YCBA, her treatment of The Island of Barbados catalyzed a deeper exploration into the various portrayals of Barbados from the period. Sarah Mead Leonard, Postdoctoral Associate, at the YCBA, assisted with the art historical research of the museum’s painting.
During the recent trip, Bezur, Hark, and Francis conducted technical analysis of A View of Bridge Town and Carlisle Bay in Barbadoes with the Governor Going to Church Attended by his Guards along with several other important works at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society. Their examinations included multi-band imaging, XRF handheld analysis, and sampling. These various modes of analysis can provide a comprehensive understanding of the artworks’ creation, materials, and changes over time, providing insights into artists’ processes. The information gathered from these technical examinations will be used to compare with complementary analyses conducted on the National Trust’s and YCBA’s paintings.
Richard Hark conducting spot XRF analysis on a painting of an unknown woman at the BMHS, photo by YCBA staff
Museum staff, interns, and volunteers at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society facilitated and aided the technical analysis inside the galleries and were present throughout public demonstrations of these processes, providing networking opportunities for individuals interested in pursuing careers in conservation or conservation science. Bezur, Hark, and Francis—alongside Anne Bancroft, Head of Conservation and Collection Care at the BMHS—participated in a public symposium titled “Views of Bridgetown,” which explored how science, history, and art conservation can reveal the hidden stories of Cultural heritage.
Town presented a public lecture that expounded on the shared histories of Barbados and the YCBA, noting that Mellon had acquired more than ten works by Agostino Brunias (1730–1796)—an Italian painter whose paintings and prints depicting the enslaved and free people of the Caribbean were recently acquired by several major institutions including The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, and the Brooklyn Museum. These acquisitions are indicative of the importance and increasing interest in artworks from the area.
During their trip, Bezur, Hark, Town, and Francis explored Barbados, visiting historically and culturally significant sites, many of which are depicted in the YCBA’s painting. They saw the historic fortifications in Bridgetown, the oldest surviving windmill at Morgan Lewis (dating to 1721), several historic plantation sites, churches, and traditional chattel houses.
