User:Nataliearndt11/The Oath of the Ancestors
The Oath of the Ancestors (Lethière)
[edit]The Oath of the Ancestors (1822) is an oil-on-canvas painting by French Neoclassical artist Guillaume Guillon-Lethière. The painting depicts two of Haiti’s founding revolutionaries, mix-raced general Alexandre Pétion and Black general Jean-Jacques Dessalines at a decisive moment in the Haitian Revolution. The two generals are seen forming an alliance in 1802 to oust French forces from the island.
Lethière made this painting to celebrate the birth of the nation of Haiti and acknowledge his racial identity as a mixed-race French man of Caribbean descent.[1] Lethière intended for this painting to be a gift to Haitians to pay for the hardships they suffered as a formerly enslaved French colony.[1] The painting was found in the ruins of the presidential palace in the Haitian capital following the 2010 Haiti earthquake and was restored by the Louvre. Currently, it lives at the Musée du Panthéon National Haïtien in Port Au Prince, Haiti.[2]
Context
[edit]Lethière was the son of Marie-Françoise Pepeye, who was likely enslaved at the time of his birth, and a French planter, Pierre Guillon.[1] A member of the elite class of people of color living in France, Lethière was a well respected and successful painter.[3] However, Lethière had been confronted with the reality of his Creole past as a mixed-race man living in France when the right to have Guillon included in his name was legally contested in 1819 by a man who said Lethière was born out of adultery, making him an illegitimate son of Guillon.[1]
Having been forced to acknowledge his identity as a mulatto man, Lethière became a passionate member of the revolution[4] created this painting to align himself with and celebrate the Black and mulatto revolutionaries in Haiti who bravely came together to fight against French forces.[3]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d Bell, Esther; Meslay, Olivier (2024). Guillaume Lethière. Williamstown (Massachusetts) New Haven: Clark Art Institute, distributed by Yale University Press. ISBN 978-1-935998-60-0.
- ^ "The Oath of the Ancestors, 1822". Haitian Art Society. Retrieved 2024-11-11.
- ^ a b Kadish, Doris Y. (2005). "Haiti and Abolitionism in 1825: The Example of Sophie Doin". Yale French Studies (107): 108–130. doi:10.2307/4149313. ISSN 0044-0078.
- ^ Grigsby, Darcy Grimaldo (2001). "Revolutionary Sons, White Fathers, and Creole Difference: Guillaume Guillon-Lethière's "Oath of the Ancestors" (1822)". Yale French Studies (101): 201–226. doi:10.2307/3090614. ISSN 0044-0078.