Color pastel and charcoal on thin buff wove paper, 1949. 432x381 mm; 17x15 inches. Signed and dated in pastel, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, New York.
This striking portrait of the Haitian national hero, revolutionary leader and general François-Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture is a significant 1940s drawing by Richmond Barthé - a very scarce study for an important Haitian commission.
In the fall of 1948, Barthé was awarded commissions by Haiti's president Dumarais Estimé - a new coin with Estimé's profile and two large public monuments to honor both L'Ouverture and his successor Jean-Jacques Dessalines. The monuments were by far the largest commissions Barthé had taken on - envisioned as part of a grand two hundredth anniversary commemorating Port-au-Prince's founding as the nation's capital. For L'Ouverture's portrait, in 1949, Barthé hired Ural Wilson from Katherine Dunham's dance company as a model. The artist translated his model dressed in period costume and holding a sword into a larger than life heroic figure. The bronze was cast in New York and shipped to Haiti in 1950, but it was not publicly unveiled until 1954, after Barthé had completed the second monument of Dessalines for the new president Paul Magloire. Vendryes pp. 143, 150-154.
