Hermithe Hyppolite
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Figure in modern Haitian art scene
- domestic worker
Hermithe Hyppolite | |
|---|---|
| Born | c. 1916 |
| Died | 5 June 2007 (aged 90–91)[1] Port-au-Prince, Haiti |
| Occupations |
|
| Spouse | |
| Children | Four, including Fils Rigaud Benoit, Castelneau Benoit, Yves Lafontant (adopted), and Jacques Dorcé (adopted) |
| Parent | Hector Hyppolite (father) |
Hermithe Hyppolite (also referred under first name spellings of Hermite, Herminthe, Ermite, or last names Hypolite, Hyppolyte, or Hypolyte; c. 1916 – 5 June 2007), was a figure within the mid-20th-century Haitian art movement in Port-au-Prince. Hyppolite played a supportive role in the early development of the modern Haitian art movement. She was a member of two influential families of Haitian artists as the daughter of painter Hector Hyppolite and the spouse of painter Rigaud Benoit.[2][3] Together with Benoit, she raised and mentored four painters in the modern Haitian art scene, including Fils Rigaud Benoit,[4][5] Castelneau Benoit,[6] Yves Lafontant, and Jacques Dorcé.[7][8]
Hyppolite was born in Haiti around 1916 to the artist Hector Hyppolite. Her father, a third-generation Vodou priest,[9]: 108 [10]: 54 became a key figure in the Haitian art scene,[11][12][13] but prior to that apprenticed as a cobbler, worked as an innkeeper, and also worked as a painter, painting homes and doors.[14]
She was identified as the only daughter of his for whom there is a documented birth record.[15][16] However, scholars have noted a chronological discrepancy with her birth year as her father reportedly resided in Cuba from 1909 until 1920.[17][18][15] Her father and mother never officially married, which her father attributed to his spiritual devotion to the Voudou deities, in particular the Siren (La Sirèn).[19]: 139 Her father was vocal about his rejection of secular marriage and his mystical marriages with the lwa the Siren, the Vodou goddess of the sea as well as the lwa Erzulie Dantor.[20][9][21]
She may have been mentioned in an interview her father gave to Selden Rodman:[22]: 67
I have several children outside, but they're all grown up now; they're big and they're ambitious and they're just waiting for me to die so they can inherit from me. But my new baby, ah, she's different. I shall bring her up in my own way. Her name signifies love. So when she's a grown woman and a man calls her by her name, he will be saying to her: You are my love.[22]: 67
Her father may have been speaking directly about Hermite Hyppolite as his biological descendant. However, it is possible that he was speaking about his initiates (ounsi) as his children, metaphorically describing himself as a parent of love, or referring to an attribute of one of the lwa, such as Erzulie Freda.[15][12]
Career and legacy
She married Rigaud Benoit, who was a close friend of her father. [23][24]: 332 [25]: 27 In the early years of Benoit's career, before he gained international acclaim, Hyppolite provided financial stability for the household by doing washing in their neighbourhood near Grand Rue, so that Benoit could pursue art.[26][18]
With Benoit, she raised four children who became artists of the modern Haitian art movement: Fils Rigaud Benoit, Castelneau Benoit, Yves Lafontant, and Jacques Dorcé. Hyppolite and Benoit had two biological children together: Fils Rigaud Benoit and Castelneau Benoit, both of whom became painters.[6][8][5][4] The couple adopted and mentored Yves Lafontant and Jacques Dorcé, who also became artists in their own right.[7][8]
Hyppolite died in Port-au-Prince on 5 June 2007.[1]
References
- 1 2 "Acte de décès de Hermithe Hypolite". Haïti, état civil, 1794-2018. Port-au-Prince, Ouest, Haïti: Archives Nationales d'Haïti. 2007-06-05. Certificate 338, Page 116.
Name: Hermithe Hypolite; Sex: Female; Death Date: 5 Jun 2007; Event Date: 6 Jun 2007; Mother: Marthe Charles; Father: Hector Hypolite, Digital Folder Number 103958381, Image Number 121, accessed digitized record via FamilySearch
- ↑ Stevenson, Tori (2025). The Haitian Artist Hector Hyppolite: The Aesthetic Convergence of Vodou, Négritude, and Surrealism (Master's thesis). University of Oregon. p. 18. Retrieved 2026-04-25.
Some scholars claim that he left Haiti much later than he states due to the birth of his daughter, Hermite, in 1916; Hermite would become the wife of Hyppolite's fellow Centre d'Art painter Rigaud Benoit. Hector Hyppolite, 1891?-1948, Paris: Éditions de Capri / Comité Hector Hyppolite
- ↑ Nader-Salomon, Myriam. "Rigaud Benoit". Myriam Nader Haitian Art Gallery. Myriam Nader Haitian Art Gallery. Archived from the original on 2025-10-09. Retrieved 2026-04-25.
Benoit...was also connected to the great master Hector Hyppolite through marriage, further linking him to Haiti's first generation of internationally celebrated artists.
- 1 2 Grinnell College (2026). "Rigaud Benoit, Fils". Haitian Art Digital Crossroads (Grinnell College eMuseum). Retrieved 2026-04-25.
Fils Rigaud Benoit V. is the son of another well-known artist, Rigaud Benoit. He has two adopted siblings who are also accomplished artists who go by the names of Yves Lafontant and Jacques Dorce. Fils Rigaud Benoit currently lives in New York (April 2023). He is the grandson of Hector Hyppolite.
- 1 2 "Benoit, Fils Rigaud". Haitian Art Society. Retrieved 2026-04-23.
Fils Rigaud Benoit is the son of Rigaud. His mother is the daughter of Hector Hyppolite to whom his father was married.
- 1 2 "Voodoo Ceremony by Castelneau Benoit". Haitian Paintings. Retrieved 2026-04-24.
Rigaud Benoit... produced a family of artists who have now become part of the Benoit legacy. Castelnau V. Benoit is his son.
- 1 2 "Rigaud Benoit Biography". The Electric Gallery. Retrieved 2026-04-23.
He was married to the daughter of Hector Hyppolite and had two children with her, plus he adopted at least two other children, Yves Lafontant and Jacques Dorce, both of whom became accomplished artists in their own right.
- 1 2 3 "Rigaud Benoit". Chicago Gallery of Haitian Art. Retrieved 2026-04-23.
Benoit married Hector Hyppolite's daughter Hermithe, fathered two children with her and had a long and successful career until his death on October 30, 1986.
- 1 2 Congdon, Kristin G.; Hallmark, Kara Kelley (2002). Artists from Latin American Cultures: A Biographical Dictionary. Bloomsbury Publishing.
- ↑ Decker, Andrew (1991-04-29). "Best Bids: A Period of Adjustment". New York Magazine. Vol. 24, no. 17. New York Media, LLC. p. 54. ISSN 0028-7369.
Haitians Rigaud Benoit and Hector Hyppolite (who was also a voodoo priest) were among that country's first generation of artists whose works were grounded in Western art but dedicated to Christian, voodoo, and Haitian iconography and ritual.
- ↑ Dansie, Marta (2016-05-09). "Hyppolite, Hector (c. 1894–1948)". Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism. Taylor and Francis. doi:10.4324/9781135000356-REM177-1. Retrieved 2026-04-24.
Hyppolite was one of Haiti's most celebrated artists from the mid-20th century onwards...his work was prodigious, consisting of hundreds of paintings, exhibited in Haiti and abroad during his lifetime...Hyppolite's prominence during the early days of the Centre d'Art, founded in 1944, made him a leading figure in Haiti's so-called naïve art movement.
- 1 2 Appiah, Kwame Anthony; Gates, Henry Louis (2005). Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 126. ISBN 9780195170559.
- ↑ "Hyppolite, Hector (1894-1948)". Haitian Art Society. Retrieved 2026-04-23.
- ↑ Méndez-Méndez, Serafín; Cueto, Gail (2003). Notable Caribbeans and Caribbean Americans: A Biographical Dictionary. ABC-CLIO. pp. 227–228. ISBN 9780313093203.
Hector Hyppolite was born on September 16, 1894, in the town of Saint Marc in Haiti. He was a self-made artist with little or no education who worked most of his life as an apprentice cobbler, an innkeeper, and a house painter... for most of his adult life he worked as an itinerant house painter and as a decorative painter of house doors. This was his closest connection to art.
- 1 2 3 Strongman, Roberto (2019). Queering Black Atlantic Religions: Transcorporeality in Vodou, Candomblé, and Santería. Duke University Press. ISBN 9781478003458.
[his] daughter appears to function as a fictive construct as she renders him the parent of Love, the main attribute of the Haitian vodou lwa Erzulie Freda...birth of only one daughter: Ermite. The noncorrespondence of this name with the one given by Hyppolite seems to endorse the possibility that he was speaking of family in metaphorical and allegorical terms. (ebook, no page number)
- ↑ St. Jean, Serge (1973). Hector Hyppolite: Une somme. Port-au-Prince: S. St. Jean. pp. 1–34. Retrieved 2026-04-25.
- ↑ Le Clézio, J. M. G. (2011). "Preface". In Comité Hector Hyppolite (ed.). Hector Hyppolite. Paris: Éditions de Capri.
- 1 2 "Rigaud Benoit (1911-1986)". Le Centre d'Art. Retrieved 2026-04-25.
Rigaud Benoit married Hermite, the daughter of his friend Hector Hyppolite
- ↑ Alexis, Gérald (Fall 2004). "Hector Hyppolite: sa peinture profane". Journal of Haitian Studies. 10 (2): 135–141. Retrieved 2026-04-23.
On sait l'importance qu'avait la femme dans la vie d'Hector Hyppolite. C'est sans doute à cause de sa relation privilégiée avec la Sirène, qu'on ne lui a connu aucun mariage, aucune union libre stable. Notons toutefois qu'il a eu une fille, Hermite. Mais, tous s'accordent à dire qu'il adorait les femmes et ne manquait pas, comme l'a écrit Serge St. Jean «le fleuve enivrant et dangereux de la volupté».
[The importance of women in the life of Hector Hyppolite is well known. It is likely because of his privileged relationship with the Siren that he was never known to have a marriage or any stable common-law union. Let us note, however, that he had a daughter, Hermite. But everyone agrees that he adored women and did not fail, as Serge St. Jean wrote, [to throw himself into] "the intoxicating and dangerous river of pleasure.] - ↑ Barnitz, Jacqueline (2001). Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America. University of Texas Press. p. 124. ISBN 9780292708570.
he [Hyppolite] was believed by some to be a voodoo priest himself and reportedly did not marry because he claimed to be married to Sirène, Goddess of the Sea
- ↑ Cosentino, Donald J. (1995). Cosentino, Donald (ed.). Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou. Los Angeles, Calif.: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. p. 198.
Hector Hyppolite's painting emanated directly from his spiritual life as a Vodou priest, devoted to the lwa and united in mystic marriage to Lasirén.
- 1 2 Rodman, Selden (1948). "Discovery of Hector Hyppolite". Renaissance in Haiti: Popular Painters in the Black Republic (PDF). New York: Pellegrini & Cudahy. p. 67. Retrieved 2026-04-24.
I am married, you know, to my protective spirit, so I can't marry anyone else. When I was a child, my grandfather, a great priest of Vaudou, married me to La Sirene, and she has always been my mystic wife...
- ↑ Hoffman, Larry G. (1985). Haitian Art: The Legend and Legacy of the Naïve Tradition. Davenport Art Gallery. p. 171.
[Benoit was] different in his discipline nature from his friend Hector Hyppolite...
- ↑ Chilvers, Ian; Glaves-Smith, John (2009). A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art. Oxford University Press. p. 332. ISBN 9780199239658. Retrieved 2026-04-25.
His success helped to inspire other Haitian naive painters notably Rigaud Benoit (1911-86), who married Hyppolite's daughter...
- ↑ Demme, Jonathan (1997). Island on Fire: Passionate Visions of Haiti from the Collection of Jonathan Demme. Kaliko Press. p. 27. Retrieved 2026-04-23.
Benoit married Hector Hyppolite's daughter Hermithe...
- ↑ "Rigaud Benoit Biography". The Gallery of Everything. Retrieved 2026-04-23.
Benoit married Hector Hyppolite's daughter, Herminthe, who supported his practice by taking in washing in their neighbourhood just off the Grand Rue.