Eugène DEVERIA - Scene from the revolt of Saint Domnigue

Eugène Deveria
Paris, 1805 – Pau, 1865
Scene from the Revolt of Saint Domingue
Oil on canvas 41 x 33 cm (46 x 38 cm with frame) Signed at the top "Eug. Deveria"
Beautiful giltwood frame
Good condition (apart from a tear in the lower right corner and some missing pieces, including on the face of the Black man in the upper left corner)
On view at the gallery

Eugène Deveria often painted small scenes illustrating historical episodes and treated in a Romantic manner, that is, simultaneously staged, dramatized, and lit as if on a theater stage. It is therefore difficult to date the painting, but the scene depicted here can be identified. In his biography of the painter Eugène Deveria published in 1887, Hernán Díaz Arrieta (known as Alone) recounts how François-Marie Deveria, probably of Italian origin, "entered the navy early and assisted as a commissioner in the battle of Trafalgar; he was 26 years old when he married, in very romantic circumstances, a young Creole girl who was a little over sixteen. Miss Chaumont, as she was called, enjoyed a very pretty fortune, and was also remarkably beautiful. Of these two advantages, beauty soon remained hers alone, because the revolt of the blacks of Saint-Domingue took away her fortune. Despite their precarious position and their many children, in 1814 there were six of them, Théodule, Achille, Désirée, Octavie, Eugène, and Laure. Mr. and Mrs. François Devéria, who had settled in Paris, did not hesitate to open their house to Mrs. Chaumont the mother and her young son. Thus our painting most certainly illustrates a scene from the revolt of Saint Domingue in the war of independence between 1791 and 1804 when the Haitians obtained the end of slavery and their independence.

Ref: UGRBYXGILO