Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1976.7.32
Gallery Label:
In a paneled room, members of a well-to-do family appear to be celebrating with a toast. At left, two servants prepare glasses and wine for the assembled sitters. A black servant polishes a goblet, while the white servant next to him uncorks a bottle. The seated man wearing black is probably Robert Raikes, a prosperous newspaper proprietor based in Gloucester. Close by was Bristol, a major seaport where many people of African descent arrived in Britain from the Americas, and where some were bartered or sold as slaves. Raikes’s "Gloucester Journal" conveyed news of Atlantic ships and trade, as well as advertisements for black servants (probably enslaved) who had escaped from their masters.\n\n Gallery label for Figures of Empire: Slavery and Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain (Yale Center for British Art, 2014-10-02 - 2014-12-14)