'View of Kelly's Estate', oil on canvas, by Isaac Mendes Belisario (1795-1849) at the National Gallery of Jamaica.
New York: THE TANGLED mysteries of Jamaica's history continue to be unravelled with the latest publication from The Mill Press of their giant text, Belisario: Sketches in Character, a historical biography of the Jewish-Jamaican artist, Isaac Mendes Belisario.
The publication, which was officially launched at the National Gallery in Jamaica last month, was unveiled to a New York City audience recently at the Yale Club in Manhattan.
The book offers new insights into the life and work of the 19th-century artist, whose art captured the Jonkonnu (John Canoe) rituals of the slaves in Jamaica and offered the first detailed look at Jamaican performance characters.
The title of the book is based on Belisario's work, 'Sketches of Character, in Illustration of the Habits, Occupation, and Costume of the Negro Population in the Island of Jamaica' - a series of hand-coloured lithographs published on the eve of emancipation in 1837/38, which depicted the slaves' Christmas masquerades.
Author Jackie Ranston signing copies of her book, 'Belisario - Sketches of Character'. - Contributed photographs
Odyssey
Researched and written by historian, Jackie Ranston, the book began as the brainchild of Mill Press publisher, Valerie Facey who had long admired the Belisario lithographs in reposit at the National Library in Jamaica.
Facey described the effort as an odyssey that took close to 20 years to complete, but believes the richly illustrated, well-researched document is an important addition to the annals of Jamaican and Judaic history.
"This book should be found in every school library worldwide, in every museum and institution of learning with interests in world history, art and religion," she said.
Author, Jackie Ranston, noted that Belisario's Jonkonnu sketches which he started Christmas 1836 are "the only visual record we have of the masquerade made by a firsthand observer" and that overtime the masquerades became more elaborate as they incorporated the traditions of other African peoples and even some European carnival traditions. If anything, over time, Jonkonnu became a leveller of slave society."
Publishers/owners of The Mill Press of Jamaica, Valerie (left) and Maurice Facey, are joined by Jamaica's consul general to New York, Geneive Brown-Metzger (centre), at the book launch on November 19.
Renewed interest
There has been renewed interest in Belisario' work in recent years, and the publication comes on the heels of last year's ground-breaking exhibition on the artist at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut.
The Yale exhibition, 'Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His World', was organised to commemorate the bicentennial of the abolition of the British slave trade. It was the first exhibition to focus exclusively on the visual and material culture of slavery and emancipation in Jamaica.
Vice-chancellor emeritus of the University of the West Indies, Professor Rex Nettleford, speaking at the opening of the exhibition last year said it was "a positive contribution to the discourse" on Caribbean culture and history, and that the works unveiled were a "priceless legacy in a society on a quest for self".
'Koo, Koo', or Actor Boy, from 'Sketches of Character in Illustration of the Habits, Occupation, and Costume of the Negro Population in the Island of Jamaica. Kingston', published by the artist in 1837.
story of humankind
Commenting on the new publication from The Mill Press, he wrote in the book's foreword that "he (Belisario) was Jewish and not African or Christian European merely speaks to the textured reality of the Jamaican persona. This makes Isaac Belisario's story, the story of all Jamaica, indeed of all the Caribbean - indeed of all of humankind".
Mill Press is a Jamaican publishing house concentrating on the island's heritage, art and culture.