The National Gallery reopened in new spaces its Pre 20th Century Galleries under the generalized heading “Art in Jamaica c.1000 – c.1900.” The new galleries serve as a historical counterpoint to the series of galleries that chart the development of the National School in the Twentieth Century.

Beginning with the art of the Taino and that of Spain, which controlled Jamaica right up until 1655 when Cromwell’s forces captured the island.

Four gallery spaces dutifully chart the course of visual representation of the English period dominated by portraits of the plantocracy and images of Jamaica in the picturesque tradition of George Robertson, James Hakewill, and Joseph Bartholomew Kidd.

Since no Sculptural art of African-Jamaicans of the period survived they are represented by “the images and objects of the inhuman and devastatingly dehumanizing institution that was slavery.

The final spaces are dominated by the work of Belisario – six landscapes and a closing annex dedicated to his Sketches of Character in illustration of the Habits, Occupation and Costume of the Negro Population in the island of Jamaica created on the eve of emancipation, in 1837.