The National Gallery has linked hundreds of its famous paintings to slavery – if somewhat tenuously in many cases.
Staff have conducted an audit over three years to find artworks possibly owned or painted by anyone connected to slavery.
So far, they have covered paintings the gallery acquired between 1824 and 1880 – resulting in many favourites being tarnished.
British artifacts such as Gainsborough, Constable, and Hogarth, have been in the news, alongside Renaissance masterpieces Raphael Titian, Raphael, and Botticelli. William Ottley was the owner of 17 slaves in Antigua, and his Mystic Nativity.
The National Gallery has linked hundreds of its famous paintings to slavery – if somewhat tenuously in many cases. Pictured: John Constable’s Hay Wain, oil on canvas. 1821
Raphael’s Pope Julius II was bought from the collection of John Angerstein, who insured slave-transporting ships. Dutch master Rembrandt’s Self-portrait At The Age Of 63 was bought from George Brodrick, who came from a slave-owning family.
The gallery says the project aims to ‘find out what links to slave ownership can be traced with the gallery and to what extent the profits from plantation slavery impacted our early history’.
These links have been added to labels placed beside paintings. Researchers found that John Constable’s famous work, The Hay Wain, was donated to the gallery by Edmund Higginson, who inherited money from an uncle who traded goods made by slaves in South Carolina.
Staff have conducted an audit over three years to find artworks possibly owned or painted by slave-owners. Pictured: A self portrait by Rembrandt, completed shortly before his death in 1669
Allegory of Prudence, circa 1560-70 by Titian, Tiziano Vecellio (c.1487-1576), as shown in The Age of Titian
Constable’s The Cornfield was presented to the gallery in 1837 by several patrons including poet William Wordsworth, who once lived in a house in Dorset owned by a plantation holder.
Titian’s An Allegory of Prudence was once owned by the Rothschild family, whose 19th-century global businesses brought them into connection with slave owners.
But the family also arranged the £15 million loan that allowed the government to compensate plantation owners and abolish slavery in 1833.
So far, they have covered paintings the gallery acquired between 1824 and 1880 – resulting in many favourites being tarnished. Pictured: Painting titled, Pope Julius II, by Raphael
British masterworks by Gainsborough, Constable and Hogarth are now in the limelight, as well as works by Titian, Raphael and Botticelli from the Renaissance. Pictured: Painting by Botticelli, Mystic Nativity
Hannah Rothschild was recently chairman of the gallery’s board of trustees.
A gallery spokesman said: ‘The data aims as far as is possible to present objectively, facts relevant to the long and complex history of the transatlantic slave trade.
‘From the information provided, users will be able to determine for themselves the nature and extent of these connections.’