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Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
(HAITI.) POTIER DE BALDIVIA, JACQUES. A Sugar Cane Plantation in Saint Domingue. Aquarelle, pen and ink, grey wash and watercolor. 8x87-3/4 inches (20.3x223cm), on four joined sheets, inscribed "Lande." Saint Domingue, circa 1757
a remarkable aquarelle by a french resident of saint domingue. Jacques Potier, a French infantry captain, engineer and draughtsman, served in Saint Domingue from 1755 until 1762. He was sent by the Duke of Orleans to build new fortifications and develop the colony as a naval base to defend France's vital sugar trade. This aquarelle shows a classic "habitation du sucre," (sugar plantation) featuring the master's residence, a row of slave cabins, fields of cane, the mill and sugar-house. One of the buildings bears the date of 1757. Potier's abilities as a draughtsman are clearly evident in the careful detail of the landscape and architecture. But his drawing is even more remarkable for its graphic depiction of the cruel treatment of the slaves in the French colony. Here we see on the left, a group of slave cabins; a mother and father are playing with their child in a peaceful family scene. While perhaps 20 yards to the right, we see a slave bearing a runaway's collar with iron prongs sprouting like branches from his neck. One man holds him from behind, while another raises a whip. Between them stands a well-dressed man, quite likely the master or one of his sons. The French exploited the rich agriculture of the island through the forced labor of half a million notoriously ill-treated slaves. This shameful exploitation would lead to Toussaint L'Ouverture's revolution of 1791, his eventual victory in 1803, and the creation of the independent state of Haiti in 1804. Potier was wounded in a skirmish with the English in 1762 and returned to France where he was made a Knight of the Order of St. Louis and then held the position of adviser on military engineering to the Duke of Orleans until shortly before the French Revolution of 1789.
