WILLIAMSTOWN, Massachusetts — After descending the stairs at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, visitors are welcomed into the gallery space by a monumental reproduction of a harrowing scene from Roman antiquity: Lucius Junius Brutus presiding over his sons’ execution. The image bears hallmarks of Neoclassical painting, from rigid lines and classical architecture to finely rendered statuesque figures. At first glance, the painting feels like it could have been made by Jacques-Louis David, or perhaps Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. It is by neither; instead, a not-so-familiar name, Guillaume Lethière, is printed in capital letters in large white text against a striking crimson wall.
Lethière was one of the most prominent and influential figures in French painting during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, captivating international audiences with his technical precision, arresting portraiture, and grand-scale history paintings. He was born in Sainte-Anne, Guadeloupe, a Caribbean archipelago and a colony of France as the third child to a White, plantation-owning father and a formerly enslaved mixed-race mother. At the early age of 14, he traveled to France with his father, where he received a prestigious art education and was eventually accepted into the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. Throughout his life, Lethière garnered success and recognition, winning coveted awards and securing commissions from French royalty and Caribbean aristocracy alike, all amidst a backdrop of violence and revolution. Despite such accolades and popularity, Lethière fell into obscurity after his death.
The Clark, in partnership with the Louvre, has undertaken the tall order of resurrecting Lethière’s legacy and restoring his rightful place in the mainstream art historical canon. Featuring over 100 works, including paintings, drawings, and prints (as well as a substantial 432 page monograph), this first-ever in-depth retrospective explores the artist’s extensive and accomplished career within a complex and turbulent sociopolitical context. In the process, it uncovers new insights about other undervalued artists and cultural figures, particularly people of color, within the artist’s periphery.
The exhibition takes detours away from Lethière’s timeline to contextualize his story. One such digression introduces obscure figures within Creole culture and the complex relationship between France and its colonies. His home was, according to a 19th-century writer the exhibition materials quote, “open to all Creoles,” a sentiment that curators represent by showcasing a variety of pieces by artists and cultural figures working in and around the Caribbean, including his students.
The broadness of the exhibition allows space for new research findings that not only draw Lethière out of obscurity, but many of his contemporaries as well. A self-portrait on view by Hortense Haudenbourt-Lescot, a mixed-race woman whom Lethière taught, for instance, emulates the same air of defiance and confidence that her mentor captured in his painting of his daughter-in-law, Eugénie Servières. And while establishing provenance for Lethière’s work, curators came across records of other notable but otherwise unknown or under-appreciated individuals, such as François Fournier de Pescay, a prominent mixed-race physician in France nd Haiti, and Augustine Cochet de Saint-Omer, the artist who painted it.
Curators are keen to interweave Lethière’s biography with the political, social, and racial tumult that unfolded around him. Other detours, for instance, foreground the violence that permeated the time period, namely the French and Haitian Revolutions (1789–99 and 1791–1804). This movement between the artist and his greater sociopolitical context reinforces the significance of his ability to navigate these fluctuating systems and still find success. Lethière’s work as an abolitionist, for instance, is apparent in the show’s pièce de résistance, “Oath of the Ancestors” (1822). Though it was unable to be transported to the Clark at the time of the opening, a backlit reproduction stands in its place like a brilliant beacon.
The painting depicts the alliance of Haiti’s founding revolutionaries in a moment of triumph after securing independence and the abolition of slavery. General Alexandre Pétion, who is mixed-race, and General Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who is Black, reach for each other while stepping on discarded shackles, signaling the end of slavery. Despite the conflict that persists in the background, Pétion and Dessalines direct their gaze upward to God, parting the dark clouds with dazzling white light. Lethière signed this piece “g. Guillon Le Thiere born in Guadeloupe 1760” and arranged for its covert transport to Haiti, which the curators believe evidences the artist’s connection to his birthplace, mixed-race heritage, and the politics of the revolution.
In many ways, the painting and its journey across the Atlantic underscore the importance of the exhibition’s throughline of maintaining connection to one’s cultural heritage despite a backdrop of dueling national interests. It also speaks to Lethière’s personal journey — after all, art was a pathway to his own freedom. While born into enslavement, Lethière’s accomplishments encouraged his father to legally recognize him as his progeny and inheritor of his estate in 1799. And though Lethière’s existence has so far been left out of the dominant narrative of the long 19th century, his artistic contributions and support of the abolitionist cause have made him a celebrated figure in Haiti to this day: His name and image are immortalized in everything from street signs to public art.
It is not uncommon to see contemporary art exhibitions centralize discussions of race with flashy taglines and buzzwords. Institutions, however, bear a responsibility to walking the line between performativity and awareness. The Clark does so well, presenting an eloquent and thought-provoking retrospective, examining the impact of Lethière’s racial heritage within a much broader social and political context. It champions his legacy as an artist, educator, and cultural figure, while emphasizing that his reemergence into the public consciousness cannot be distilled to just his race — it must be received in the full context of his life. Throughout his artistic career, Lethière straddled two worlds at odds: Despite his ongoing relationship with the French aristocracy, he maintained connection to his mixed-race heritage and abolitionism, which was in direct opposition to the Bonapartes’ decision to reinstate slavery. This exhibition does well in re-illuminating figures, stories, and artworks that were once lost to time.
Guillaume Lethière continues at the Clark Art Institute (225 South Street, Williamstown, Massachusetts) through October 14, before debuting at the Musée du Louvre, Paris in November. The exhibition was organized by Esther Bell, Olivier Meslay, Sophie Kerwin, and Marie-Pierre Salé.
