By Natalie Willis. Elmer Joseph Read, an American artist (b.1860, death date unknown), painted scenes of life in Nassau that provide a strange sense of documentary and fiction. They are stylised images, but the way Read tries to capture his perspective of life in the capital at the time is useful to us for a few reasons. It helps us to see how Nassau has changed over the years, and it also shows us how those who many modern day Bahamians are descended from were seen in that time. So many of the colonial paintings from this time use the iconography of smiling natives, women in headwraps, along with lush greenery and sea-glass ocean water as colonial propaganda. It gave a way to say, “Look how beautiful and safe and bountiful this empire is!” But these sentiments and picturesque ideals aside, uncomfortable as it may be at times, are still things we feel today, albeit in an evolved and shifted form.
From the Collection: “East Street With Donkey and Cart” (1914) by E J Read
