Coloured Ivory
Portrait Miniatures in the Dutch Atlantic World
This research project examines a group of portrait miniatures from the Dutch West Indies in the Rijksmuseum’s collection, highlighting their importance as documents of—and in—the Dutch Atlantic world in the long eighteenth century.
About the project
Little is known about a group of portrait miniatures that came to the Rijksmuseum from unidentified inventories in Suriname, nor about their diverse sitters. Studying these objects in depth, this project reveals the importance of the medium in the Dutch West Indies and the circum-Atlantic world it connected. It links the subject matter of the miniatures with their materiality, highlighting how materials like ivory, pearls, and gold were tied to colonial expansion, slavery, and discourses on race and skin colour. Made to be portable in a period characterised by overseas travel, this research situates the miniatures in the movement of people, goods, and ideas in the Dutch Atlantic world.
Aim of the project
This project will result in the publication of a book, Coloured Ivory, in the Rijksmuseum Studies in History series. It expands our knowledge of this group of portrait miniatures and the stories of their sitters and makers in the Dutch West Indies, adding to a growing discipline of Caribbean art histories, while also seeking to repurpose portrait miniatures as key objects of the late-eighteenth-century Atlantic world that reveal much about its networks as well as its contradictions. In doing so, this project aims to illustrate one of the ways in which colonial connections impacted local visual culture and contributed to the formation of racial categories, including whiteness.
Researchers
Damiët Schneeweisz
d.schneeweisz@rijksmuseum.nl
Johan Huizinga Fellow
Eveline Sint Nicolaas
E.Sintnicolaas@rijksmuseum.nl
Senior Curator of History
Gijs van der Ham
Gijs.vander.Ham@rijksmuseum.nl
Senior Curator of History
Partners and sponsors
This Fellowship is made possible by the Johan Huizinga Fund/Rijksmuseum Fund, and is part of the Rijksmuseum Fellowship Programme.
