Erica Moiah James on Louis Rigaud’s portrait of Toussaint Louverture:

“Many images of Toussaint Louverture exist, but none were produced during his lifetime. The artist Louis Rigaud completed the painting shown here, the earliest known portrait of Louverture by a Haitian artist, in 1877. It was the first in a suite of portraits he produced of every Haitian leader from Louverture to the sitting president at the time; they are now part of the Yale Peabody Museum collections. Aesthetically, it is in direct conversation with a number of verbal and visual representations of Louverture produced during the nineteenth century…”

Read the rest: Portrait of a revolutionary | Arts & Culture | Yale Alumni Magazine