A Black King in Georgian London: British Art and Post-Revolutionary Haiti

Fascinating online lecture from the Paul Mellon Centre as part of their Georgian Provocations Series focusing on a portrait of Henri Christophe, King of Haiti.

I didn’t know anything about this work and its pendant picture of the king’s son and Esther Chadwick from the Courtauld took us through several aspects of the picture. She begun by telling us the story of Christophe who came to power after the Haitian Revolution. She also looked why the artist Richard Evans went to Haiti and the historic precedents behind the imagery used.

The most interesting section looked at how the pictures came to be shown in the 1818 Royal Academy show probably having been sent to William Wilberforce and submitted to the show by him as part of the abolitionist agenda. She also talked about the other works there were shown with it in particular how these works were hung either side of Turner’s “The Field of Waterloo”, speculating if the whole group was commenting on the fall of Napoleon.

 

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