Robert Saint-Brice (1893-1973) 53"x28" Spirit of the Sacred Bird 1956 Oil on Board Unframed Painting #1RA
Robert Saint-Brice (1893-1973) 53"x28" Spirit of the Sacred Bird 1956 Oil on Board Unframed Painting #1RA
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Description
Description
This original oil on board by Haitian Vodou priest and visionary painter Robert St. Brice (Pétion-Ville, 1893-1973), signed and dated 1956, measures 53 x 28 in and comes unframed. A commanding bird-like spirit fills the composition, its single piercing eye set within a feathered head that dissolves into a cascade of richly layered plumage in blues, ochres, and deep reds. The image has the hallmarks of St. Brice's finest work, a presence rendered not from observation but from the dreams in which he said the Loa, the spirits of Haitian Vodou, came to him. St. Brice did not begin painting until his fifties, after the American artist Alex John introduced him to the Centre d'Art, where he joined in 1949. Illiterate his entire life, he nonetheless became one of the most singular figures in Haitian art, ranked by historians second only to Hector Hyppolite among painters who drew their imagery directly from Vodou vision. His work is held in major collections including the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. This painting comes from Philadelphia, PA, where it will ship from. We will provide a Certificate of Authenticity.
About this artist
About this artist
Robert Saint-Brice was born in Pétion-Ville, Haiti, on August 29, 1898, and died on August 20, 1973. Unable to read or write, and long before he became an artist, Saint-Brice worked in many modest jobs—including shopkeeper, cook, peddler, and court messenger—to make ends meet. His artistic career started unexpectedly in his fifties when he met the American artist Alex H. John. Impressed by Saint-Brice’s early paintings, John showed them to DeWitt Peters in 1949, opening the doors of the Centre d’Art to him. Saint-Brice’s rise happened quickly. In 1955, the Flagg Tanning Corporation Collection purchased three of his paintings, and by 1960, he had his first solo show in New York. Haitian intellectuals of that era admired him as one of the country’s top “primitives”—a leading figure in Haiti’s early modern art movement. Saint-Brice, a practicing Vodou priest, created semi-abstract but clearly figurative works inspired by spiritual visions. He often said that his ideas came to him in dreams as messages from ancestral spirits. The number three appears repeatedly in his compositions, a symbolic structure he referred to mysteriously when explaining his creative process. His paintings challenged expectations. As Gérald Alexis notes in Peintres Haïtiens, “Saint-Brice’s paintings disturbed art critics in the early 1950s, who were accustomed to the descriptive realism of Haitian folk painters.” His bold, visionary imagery offered something radically different—an interior, mystical expression deeply rooted in Vodou cosmology. Today, Saint-Brice is recognized as one of the leading spiritual painters of Haiti’s mid-20th-century art movement. His distinctive style continues to enchant collectors and scholars worldwide.
