Research Topic
I am a current doctoral student in History of Art at St John’s College. My research explores the, heretofore, unrecognised importance of how the nineteenth-century industrialisation of colour influenced the ways in which artists (as for instance Paul Gauguin) portrayed the European colonies, particularly the French Caribbean. It thinks about the politics of pigment in this period, asking questions such as: how did the artists of this period select the colours on their palettes? Can we trace the journey of the pigment, from its making in the factory, to the shop, to its use across the French empire? Taking colour as its subject matter, the project thus thinks about how colour transformed, shaped and justified colonialism and how it travelled across the colonial territories. The project demonstrates that the colour palette of the visual material from and of the French Caribbean provides a unique insight into not only the histories of colour but into the histories of the existence and continuation of the French imperial enterprise in the Caribbean. More broadly, I am interested in relations and exchanges across global boundaries, ways of (sight)seeing, the production of goods as well as the material and sensory worlds of the imperial experience.
I hold a Masters of Arts (Honours) in History of Art from the University of St Andrews (2018) and a MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture from the University of Oxford, St Cross College (2020). My studies have been generously supported by Knud Højgaards Fond, Augustinus Fonden, St John's College, The Danish Academy in Rome and the Beit Fund.
Supervisor: Professor Alastair Wright
