This is how you see her? Rachael Pringle Polgreen of Barbados by Thomas Rowlandson’s satirical hand

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examines the complicated role that works of art play in colonial remembrance, and the ways in which they sustain stereotypes, biases and power relations over the passage of time. It takes as its case study Thomas Rowlandson’s hand-coloured etching, Rachel Pringle of Barbadoes (1796), which has been used as visual evidence for the fragmented biography of an Afro-Caribbean entrepreneur, mythologised as a brothel-keeper servicing the British navy, against the backdrop of slavery. Since the story of Rachael Pringle Polgreen (c.1753–1791) is well-known, I focus on an analysis of the artwork and its unusual composition, speculating reasons for its appearance in London’s print culture. Tracing the spectral afterlives of this print, I also argue that the image functions as a colonial keepsake, treasured as evidence of intimate connection between metropole and (post) colony.