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(HAITI.) POTIER DE BALDIVIA, JACQUES.
A Sugar Cane Plantation.
Coastal view of Santo Domingo from the Isle of Totue with Saint Louis to the
East, and Port-de-Paix to the West.
Aquarelle, pen and ink, grey wash and watercolor.
8x87-3/4 inches (20.3x223cm), on four joined sheets, inscribed “Lande.”
Santo Domingo, circa 1757
[8,000/12,000]
A REMARKABLE AQUARELLE BY A FRENCH RESIDENT OF SAINT DOMINGUE
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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.
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(HAITI.) DELACROIX, JACQUESVINCENT.
Memoire Sur L’Importance
pour la Colonie de St Domingue, d’avoir des Representans a l’Assemble des
Etats Generaux, & sur la Forme la plus legale de proceder a l’election de ses
Deputes.
12 pages 8 vo.
Paris: Chez Clousier, 1788
[600/800]
An early warning by one of the French Deputies. Jacques Vincent Delacroix stresses the
importance of establishing Haitian representatives in the French Assembly as quickly and as
legally as possible. Sabin 75164.
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