Colour concerns: the palette of race and ecology in French-Martinican art, 1847-1887

Thesis

This thesis offers a new perspective on imperialist art-making in the nineteenth century in the French Antillean Island of Martinique. The central argument is that the artistic practices of three newly arrived French male artists – the naval lieutenant Francois Lacour (1821-unknown), drawing teacher Victor Fulconis (1851-1913) and artist-traveller Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) - negotiated race and environment through their palettes. In their works they grapple with what they experienced as the ambiguous complexities both of Martinique’s population of colour and of Caribbean ‘nature’ – a landscape indelibly marked by colonial trade and exchange. Their diverse responses to the island reveal their attempts to make sense of the colony and to fashion whiteness in Martinique. The artists’ works assume and assert authority and mastery of such sites, but, as the thesis demonstrates, also reveal moments of ambivalence and uncertainty in their experience of the colony in the wake of the 1848 abolition of slavery.

A central concern of the thesis is the multiple and shifting meanings that attached to colour - as a pigment, as a racial marker, and as an artistic tool – in Martinique and more broadly in the French imperial imagination. I offer a critical examination of the imbrication of pigment and artistic experimentation in constructions of whiteness and Blackness and racial codification. I also draw on ecocriticism alongside post-colonial and de-colonial thinking to unpack the intersections between imperial discourse and the exploitation and destruction of Martinique’s environment. In examining these histories, the thesis contributes to our understanding of French colonialism in the Caribbean, of Caribbean art history, and of the varied roles played by makers of imagery in the imperial project. I also argue for the relevance of these histories to our own moment. Throughout the thesis I juxtapose the three nineteenth-century artists with contemporary Caribbean art and exhibitions, works of fiction, and present-day events. These heterogeneous materials open up new ways of thinking not only about histories of colonialism but also about neo-colonialism and its ongoing legacy for Martinique, for the island’s inhabitants, and for the Martinican diaspora.

Authors: Erikstrup, HN

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-eoq2qabxr
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English