Lyssons Estate, St. Thomas in the East, Jamaica

Hakewill's watercolor Lyssons Estate, St. Thomas in the East, Jamaica emulates J. M. W. Turner's "Plymouth Dock from Mount Edgecumbe." But while the landscape is composed in a Turneresque fashion, the crucial difference between Plymouth and Jamaica lay in the existence of slavery. The figures of enslaved Africans placed by Hakewill at the lower right contrast with Turner's boisterous group of sailors, the embodiment of English liberty.

Both these estates were owned by the Taylor family, immensely wealthy planters. The "Change of Air House" was described by Hakewill as being "for the use of convalescents on the estate." This, however, refers only to the white population. The "slave hospital," where terrible suffering was endured, was a very different environment.

Gallery label for Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and his Worlds (Yale Center for British Art, 2007-09-27 - 2007-12-30)

Credit Line: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection