Johann Zoffany, (1733?-1810), Mrs Oswald, about 1763-4. Bought, 1938. © The National Gallery, London
The National Gallery is marking the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade with an exhibition that gives a contemporary response to two works in its collection that are strongly linked to the trade in the 18th century.
Scratch the Surface will run until November 4 2007, and is made up of two parts, including a commission by artist Yinka Shonibare MBE.
The first part of the exhibition focuses on two paintings that usually hang in the Gallery’s Barry Rooms: Mrs Oswald, by Johann Zoffany (about 1763-4) and Colonel Tarleton, by Joshua Reynolds (1782). The sitters in the two dramatic portraits had well-established links to the slave trade.
Mary Oswald (died 1788) was the wife of Richard Oswald, a wealthy Scottish landowner, and daughter of an extremely rich planter, Alexander Ramsay of Jamaica. An only daughter, she inherited large estates in the West Indies, and her husband made his fortune through the transatlantic slave trade. His company owned a slave fort on Bance Island on the Sierra Leone River, that probably saw more than 10,000 enslaved Africans pass through it.
The merchant’s wife is shown in fine clothes, seated in a landscape.
Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723 - 1792), Colonel Tarleton, 1782. Bequeathed by Mrs Henrietta Charlotte Tarleton, 1951. © The National Gallery, London
Banastre Tarleton (1754-1833), meanwhile, is shown in military uniform in Reynolds’ painting. Tarleton gained a reputation in the American War of Independence for ruthlessness, being given the name ‘Bloody Ban’ by revolutionists.
He was the son of slave trader John Tarleton (1719-1773), who was also at one time mayor of Liverpool. The merchant left a fortune to his heirs, but Banastre squandered his on gambling.
Banastre became MP for Liverpool in 1790, and his voice was always to be heard in debates on the slave trade. Two of his brothers were still involved in the family business, and Banastre was as ruthless in his taunting of abolitionists as he was on the American battlefield.
Yinka Shonibare’s new work, Colonel Tarleton and Mrs Oswald, shooting, 2007. © The National Gallery, London
The two paintings are accompanied by a display putting them in context, with maps, contracts and letters, in effect highlighting how the slave trade played a major role in the National Gallery coming to own these works.
The second half of the exhibition features Yinka Shonibare’s response to the portraits. Shonibare was born in the UK and raised in Nigeria, and his work is often informed by questions of identity, race and globalisation.
In the places where the portraits of Mary Oswald and Colonel Tarleton would normally be, Shonibare has placed life-size mannequins, dressed in elegant Georgian outfits made of African textiles. The mannequins are aiming at a suspended pheasant with muskets, in reference to Oswald and Tarleton’s social status.
Shonibare’s installation is a typical example of his subversion of conventional readings of cultural identity. He played similarly with another work in the National Gallery in 1998, when he created Mrs and Mrs Andrews Without Their Heads, inspired by a Gainsborough portrait.
