Titled: Marriage de Negres d’une Maison Riche [marriage of black people in a wealthy household]

This is a moment from a charming marriage in the established free Black community of Brazil during the early 19th century. The young women at the right are in fashion that Elizabeth Bennett and her sisters from Pride & Prejudice could only dream of wearing. More on free women of Black descent in colonial Brazil: “The most invisible group in colonial Brazilian history must be free women of color. They rarely appeared in official correspondence except when their role in batuques (social dances) was denounced or when they were accused of prostitution. Not even the many surviving censuses of the colonial period record their presence in Brazil. Slaves and former slaves have received more scholarly attention than free women of color… Afro-Brazilians were not just slaves during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but also free people of color who often rivaled many whites in wealth and slave-ownership. [In fact], the single largest population group in the Province of Goiás in 1832 was composed of free females of color.” [“Marriage de Negres d’une Maison Riche” by French artist Jean Baptiste Debret. Made 1813-1831 and published in Voyage Pittoresque et Historique au Bresil [Pictquresque & Historic Voyage to Brazil] (Paris,1834-39), vol. 3, plate 15, p. 149 (top).

Source:

Free Women of Color in Central Brazil, 1779–1832, Mary C. Karasch.