Eugène Deveria - Scene From The Revolt Of Saint Domingue

Eugène DEVERIAParis, 1805 – Pau, 1865Oil on canvas41 x 33 cm (46 x 38 cm with the frame)Signed at the top “Eug. Deveria”Beautiful gilt wood frameGood condition (apart from a tear at the bottom right and some missing parts including on the face of the Black man at the top left)Visible at the galleryEugène Deveria often painted small scenes illustrating historical episodes and treated in the romantic manner, that is to say at the same time staged, dramatized and lit as on a theater stage. It is therefore difficult to date the painting but we can identify the scene represented here.In his biography of the painter Eugène Deveria published in 1887, Hernán Díaz Arrieta (known as Alone) tells 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 their fortune. Despite their precarious position and their numerous 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.