Focus on this artwork and explore the Painting.
The three-quarter portrait shows a Black man in orange-red open collar clothing, sitting on a stone bench, against a muted background, with the subject taking up most of the frame. Large metallic manacles are visible around his wrists, which lie on his lap, and a heavy chain falls across the bench and out of the frame. The man is gazing up and to his left.At its original showing the painting was titled, The Captive Slave, and the viewer is informed of the sitter's condition as a slave by the manacles and by his dark skin, which connects him to the African slave trade. His clothes suggest somewhat foreign origin but also prison garb. The features of the subject show the man as a recognizable individual person. The painting has been described as a portrait but also a hybrid with genre painting, as the name of the character in the painting is unknown.  His aspect is saintly or heroic, imploring, vulnerable, and somewhat passive in rest, which allowed British viewers, when the portrait was first shown to sympathize or pity the subject and deplore his condition. While the portrait follows high art conventions for depicting the saintly or long suffering, portraits of individual slaves were rare in the European high art tradition.
genre painting African slave trade portrait Black