![]() ![]() It was on this day in 1834 that the Emancipation Proclamation was read in King’s Square Spanish Town marking the abolition of the institution of slavery in the British Colony of Jamaica. ![]() The 1 st of August is an auspicious date in Jamaican history. ![]() The work contains all the signifiers of freedom and was meant to wordlessly communicate the ethos of that moment in colonial history. He stands on a whip (the symbol of the cruelty and oppression of enslavement), his children bury the shackles which once restrained him and his wife holds their youngest child who will never know slavery aloft. It depicts a recently emancipated family with the father triumphantly raising his hands to the sky in a gesture of freedom. The mezzotint The First of August was originally published in London to commemorate the abolition of slavery in the British colonies. ![]() David Lucas (1802 -1881) after Alexander Villiers Rippingille (c. ![]()
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