Skip to main content
Read page text
page 24
PASSPORT B B E A N I C A R T H E The Jewish artist who portrayed Jamaica’s slaves Isaac Mendes Belisario was the first Jamaican artist to illustrate the traditions of that island’s slaves. Rebecca Taylor speaks to the artist’s biographer Jackie Ranston about his extraordinary legacy REBECCA TAYLOR: How did you come across the artist? JACKIE RANSTON: The art of Isaac Mendes Belisario has long been used in books, and reproduced on everything from postage stamps to place mats, but little has been known of the man himself. I was commissioned by Valerie Facey of the Mill Press in Kingston to write a book on Belisario after she discovered that she had a connection to his Sketches of Characters. Sketches is a series of lithographs by Belisario, the most intriguing being the costumed characters of the annual Jonkonnu masquerade. The lithographs were issued to subscribers (a third of whom were Jewish) in 1837 and 1838. Valerie found out that one of the subscribers had been born a slave, and was one of her husband’s forebears. RT: Tell us about Belisario’s background. JR: On his father’s side is the family Lindo, whose name appears in the records of the Portuguese and Spanish inquisitions. We rarely hear of black slaves in the households of crypto-Jews, but in 1655 Lorenco Isaac Lindo and his wife were denounced by their household slaves in the Canary Islands to “unburden their conscience and not through ill will”. After two years, the Lindos were released and they fled to London. Succeeding generations lived in Venice, Amsterdam and Bordeaux. It was from Bordeaux that Belisario’s paternal grandfather, Alexandre Lindo, migrated to Kingston in 1765 to become Jamaica’s wealthiest merchant. Esther his daughter married Abraham Mendes Belisario, whose father was Rabbi Isaac Mendes Belisario of Bevis Marks. Isaac, the artist, is named after him. RT: Where did the artist grow up? JR: He was born in Kingston in 1794, the year that Lindo made his son-in-law a copartner in his business, which folded after a deal with the French government. Facing bankruptcy, Lindo and Belisario left for London with their families. Isaac was nine years old at the time. In London Isaac’s mother, Esther, set up a boarding school for Jewish girls in Clapton. Isaac also held the position of ‘Governor, Mehil Sedaca’ at Bevis Marks in 1824. RT: How did he become a painter? JR: Abraham, Isaac’s father, returned to the West Indies alone to manage seven sugar estates on the island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. He left Isaac under the guardianship of his brother Jacob, a stock broker. Isaac was groomed to be a businessman, but his passion for painting was too intense. He became a student of Robert Hills, the English painter and etcher. Isaac’s first known work is a watercolour showing the interior of Bevis Marks painted c.1812, and followed with an engraving of the same view. Between 1815 and 1818, Isaac exhibited on four occasions at the Society of Painters in Oil and Water Colours, but in 1820 he put aside his artistic endeavours to work as a clerk to his uncle, eventually becoming a stockbroker. In 1830, he left the stock exchange to become a full-time artist, and the following year he exhibited a watercolour, Portrait of a Lady, at the Royal Academy’s annual exhibition. The ‘lady’ appears to be the actress Ellen Tree. He followed this painting with a lithograph of her in the character of Mrs Cregan in Eily O’Connor. RT: He returned to Jamaica in 1834. What happened next? JR: Isaac found an ideal location for his studio near Kingston’s Parade – a lively area with a military barracks, theatre, the free school and a promenade. He accepted various commissions, including one from the chief justice of Jamaica, and another from the governor, the Marquis of Sligo, to do a series of paintings of his estates (now held by the National Gallery of Jamaica). He never married. He suffered from 24 JEWISHRENAISSANCE.ORG.UK JANUARY 2020
page 25
; FAC E Y M R S A N D I C E . M AU R H O N T H E O F C O U RT E SY – I O I S A R I O N C O L L E C T M E L LO N , PAU L A RT I S H I T B E L M E N D E S I S A AC © B R F O R C E N T E R YA L E pulmonary tuberculosis, which forced him to stop work in April 1839. He returned to London, where he was nursed by his sisters, and felt well enough to return to Jamaica. There, he chronicled the great fire of Kingston in August 1843 with a vivid set of lithographs. Unlike with earlier works, Belisario produced only the drawings, leaving the lithographer Adolphe Duperley, to transfer them to the stone. JR: He was a vestryman of Kingston’s Spanish and Portuguese synagogue, and had many Jewish friends, including Moses Quixano Henriques. In Sketches, Belisario shows the winner of the best-dressed masquerader competition standing outside the Fancy Warehouse, a store owned by Henriques, where many masqueraders purchased their costume accessories. Jewish stores had been patronised by slaves for decades mainly because they were open on a Sunday, the slaves’ day off. RT: Tell us about Jonkonnu. JR: Jonkonnu had its origins in the early days of slavery, when the Christmas holidays provided the only recreational opportunity for slaves. Over time it became a mix of traditions that included multiple African cultures and European masquerade alongside British mumming plays and even Shakespearean monologues. Belisario’s last known work was a portrait of Revd Isaac Lopez, cantor at the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ synagogue in Kingston. Belisario died of tuberculosis “He is revered for having preserved at his sisters’ home in London on 4 June 1849 and is buried at the Novo Cemetery, Mile End. the culture of the slaves in his Sketches” Many of the costumes and even the parades came to be funded by the planters and European residents. The female participants were loaned jewels by their mistresses for the occasion. The great houses were opened and the slaves were known to drink with their masters. If anything, Jonkonnu became a leveller of slave society. On one occasion, when two sets of boisterous masqueraders were told to unmask by the police, they were found to be of “ALL COMPLEXIONS”, Kingston’s Morning Journal disclosed. Belisario said his pictures were inspired by a desire to produce “faithful delineations of a people”. RT: What connection did he have with Jamaica’s Jewish community? RT: Did his work address the issue of slavery? JR: There is an interesting tale about his father, Abraham. When he returned to Tortola he was horrified to see how cruelly the slaves were treated. He became involved in the case of Arthur William Hodge, a member of His Majesty’s Council who was accused of murdering one of his slaves by a free black woman. Abraham was on the grand jury at the trial and took detailed notes, which he sent to London as grist to the mill of the abolitionists. Hodge was found guilty and hanged. The case was exceptional – rarely was a white person found guilty of a crime on the testimony of a black witness. Abraham spent the rest of his life working for the amelioration of slaves’ lives throughout the British West Indies. Isaac would have been very aware of his From left: French Set Girls; Queen or ‘Maam’ of the Set Girls; Red Set-Girls and Jack-in-the-Green; Koo,Koo, or Actor Boy. From Belisario’s Sketches of Character, In Illustration of the Habits, Occupation, and Costume of the Negro Population in the Island of Jamaica, 1837 father’s activities. He did not express his views openly, but his life and work remain a haunting paradox. Raised by a family of wealthy Jewish merchants and slave traders, he is revered for having preserved the culture of the slaves in his Sketches. When he returned to Jamaica in December 1834, slavery had been abolished on the first day of August that year, but the majority were not yet ‘full free’. A system had been introduced whereby the former slaves were required to work for their former owners for 40-and-a-half hours each week without wages for six years. Despite freedom to worship and own land, Jews were subject to discriminatory legislation. They could not hold public office or vote, or sit on a jury. After long agitation on their part, Jamaican Jews attained full civil rights in 1831. A year earlier, the free coloureds and free blacks had gained full equality with the whites. I think Belisario felt the pulse of a society on the cusp of change. In the words of a journalist from the Jamaica Despatch: “We have seen a very beautiful lithographic print, about to be published by Mr IM Belisario. It should be in the hands of every Jamaica family.” Jamaica is addressed as a country, not a segregated slave society. n Belisario: Sketches of a Character: A Historical Biography of a Jamaican Artist by Jackie Ranston, Mill Press, 2008. See also Jackie Ranston’s essay in The Jews of the Caribbean, ed. Jane Gerber, Littman Library, 2014. JANUARY 2020 JEWISHRENAISSANCE.ORG.UK 25 T H E C A R I B B E A N

Page Text

View plaintext

PASSPORT

B B E A N

I

C A R

T H E

The Jewish artist who portrayed Jamaica’s slaves Isaac Mendes Belisario was the first Jamaican artist to illustrate the traditions of that island’s slaves. Rebecca Taylor speaks to the artist’s biographer Jackie Ranston about his extraordinary legacy

REBECCA TAYLOR: How did you come across the artist? JACKIE RANSTON: The art of Isaac Mendes Belisario has long been used in books, and reproduced on everything from postage stamps to place mats, but little has been known of the man himself. I was commissioned by Valerie Facey of the Mill Press in Kingston to write a book on Belisario after she discovered that she had a connection to his Sketches of Characters. Sketches is a series of lithographs by Belisario, the most intriguing being the costumed characters of the annual Jonkonnu masquerade. The lithographs were issued to subscribers (a third of whom were Jewish) in 1837 and 1838. Valerie found out that one of the subscribers had been born a slave, and was one of her husband’s forebears.

RT: Tell us about Belisario’s background. JR: On his father’s side is the family Lindo, whose name appears in the records of the Portuguese and Spanish inquisitions. We rarely hear of black slaves in the households of crypto-Jews, but in 1655 Lorenco Isaac Lindo and his wife were denounced by their household slaves in the Canary Islands to “unburden their conscience and not through ill will”. After two years, the Lindos were released and they fled to London. Succeeding generations lived in Venice, Amsterdam and Bordeaux. It was from Bordeaux that Belisario’s paternal grandfather, Alexandre Lindo, migrated to Kingston in 1765 to become Jamaica’s wealthiest merchant. Esther his daughter married Abraham Mendes Belisario, whose father was Rabbi Isaac Mendes Belisario of Bevis Marks. Isaac, the artist, is named after him.

RT: Where did the artist grow up? JR: He was born in Kingston in 1794, the year that Lindo made his son-in-law a copartner in his business, which folded after a deal with the French government. Facing bankruptcy, Lindo and Belisario left for London with their families. Isaac was nine years old at the time. In London Isaac’s mother, Esther, set up a boarding school for Jewish girls in Clapton. Isaac also held the position of ‘Governor, Mehil Sedaca’ at Bevis Marks in 1824.

RT: How did he become a painter? JR: Abraham, Isaac’s father, returned to the West Indies alone to manage seven sugar estates on the island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. He left Isaac under the guardianship of his brother Jacob, a stock broker. Isaac was groomed to be a businessman, but his passion for painting was too intense. He became a student of Robert Hills, the English painter and etcher. Isaac’s first known work is a watercolour showing the interior of Bevis Marks painted c.1812, and followed with an engraving of the same view. Between 1815 and 1818, Isaac exhibited on four occasions at the Society of Painters in Oil and Water Colours, but in 1820 he put aside his artistic endeavours to work as a clerk to his uncle, eventually becoming a stockbroker. In 1830, he left the stock exchange to become a full-time artist, and the following year he exhibited a watercolour, Portrait of a Lady, at the Royal Academy’s annual exhibition. The ‘lady’ appears to be the actress Ellen Tree. He followed this painting with a lithograph of her in the character of Mrs Cregan in Eily O’Connor.

RT: He returned to Jamaica in 1834. What happened next? JR: Isaac found an ideal location for his studio near Kingston’s Parade – a lively area with a military barracks, theatre, the free school and a promenade. He accepted various commissions, including one from the chief justice of Jamaica, and another from the governor, the Marquis of Sligo, to do a series of paintings of his estates (now held by the National Gallery of Jamaica).

He never married. He suffered from

24 JEWISHRENAISSANCE.ORG.UK JANUARY 2020

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content