The Ely Family
The Ely family group portrait (1771). The painter, Angelica Kauffmann (1741-1807), was of Swiss origins. She worked in Italy before arriving in London in 1766 and became a founder member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768. She visited Ireland for six months in 1771—from which period the Ely group painting probably dates—and left England in 1782 for Rome, where she died in 1807. Grand, semi-official group portraiture is comparatively rare in Ireland, but Kauffman’s commissions included three such works: the Ely family group, the Townshend family group and the Tisdall family group. These works are anomalous in both Kauffman’s output and the Irish context. (National Gallery of Ireland)
In the Ely family group there are five figures, four of whom can be identified (from the left): Dolly Monroe and her sister, Frances; their uncle, Henry Loftus, earl of Ely; and their aunt, Frances Monroe, countess of Ely. The fifth, the enigmatic figure of the elegantly uniformed servant who bends subserviently and looks deferentially up to his mistress and master, is anonymous. He is not just a servant who is used literally to carry a reference to the elevation of Henry Loftus from viscount to earl; he is also a pictorial device and a revealing expression of eighteenth-century social history. He may have been a specific person whose identity has been lost, or he may be an example of a generic type often found in the portraiture of the period, especially that of the British school. Although he is on its periphery, the servant’s action is integral to the meaning of the painting.
Whether slavery was legal or not in Britain and Ireland remained a grey area despite various court cases. People of the class depicted by Kauffman, who were nominally servants, were openly bought and sold in both countries and so must be classed as slaves. Such sales are listed in the small ads of contemporary newspapers. For example, the Cork Journal of 15 March 1762 advertised:
‘To be sold for account of D.F. a black negro boy aged about 14 years, remarkably free from vice and a very handy willing servant’.
Other ads listed purchasers’ specific requirements, as in Williamson’s Liverpool Advertiser of 29 April 1756:
‘Wanted immediately, a black boy. He must be of a deep black complexion, and a lively, humane disposition, with good features, and not above 15, nor under 12 years of age.’
According to the beliefs of the time, the darker an individual’s colour the more exotic they were deemed to be, and therefore the more expensive. The dark skin and facial features of the Elys’ servant seem to be African or West Indian but may be read as those of subcontinental India. Precise geographical origin did not always matter; what did matter was that the origin was remote and mysterious. Kauffman’s inclusion of a black figure, the only one to be seen in her extensive output, raises a number of questions to do with the black figure in art and in society.
Black servants could be an allusion in portraits to overseas trading interests, as is seen in William Hogarth’s Wollaston family. A black figure could also be a pictorial contrast to rows of white faces. Black servants, especially boys, were often treated as prized possessions and fashionable accessories, simultaneously useful and decorative, domestic but exotic, who were decked out in elaborate livery or uniforms. They were valued aesthetically for their exoticism and usually protected and treated well so as to safeguard their financial value, although on reaching adulthood males were sometimes thrown out and returned to slavery in the West Indies. They were human commodities in an age that indulged its appetites for the colours, tastes and textures of the world beyond Europe, the expanding world of imperial possession.
The Ely Family
The Ely family group portrait (1771). The painter, Angelica Kauffmann (1741-1807), was of Swiss origins. She worked in Italy before arriving in London in 1766 and became a founder member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768. She visited Ireland for six months in 1771—from which period the Ely group painting probably dates—and left England in 1782 for Rome, where she died in 1807. Grand, semi-official group portraiture is comparatively rare in Ireland, but Kauffman’s commissions included three such works: the Ely family group, the Townshend family group and the Tisdall family group. These works are anomalous in both Kauffman’s output and the Irish context. (National Gallery of Ireland)
In the Ely family group there are five figures, four of whom can be identified (from the left): Dolly Monroe and her sister, Frances; their uncle, Henry Loftus, earl of Ely; and their aunt, Frances Monroe, countess of Ely. The fifth, the enigmatic figure of the elegantly uniformed servant who bends subserviently and looks deferentially up to his mistress and master, is anonymous. He is not just a servant who is used literally to carry a reference to the elevation of Henry Loftus from viscount to earl; he is also a pictorial device and a revealing expression of eighteenth-century social history. He may have been a specific person whose identity has been lost, or he may be an example of a generic type often found in the portraiture of the period, especially that of the British school. Although he is on its periphery, the servant’s action is integral to the meaning of the painting.
Whether slavery was legal or not in Britain and Ireland remained a grey area despite various court cases. People of the class depicted by Kauffman, who were nominally servants, were openly bought and sold in both countries and so must be classed as slaves. Such sales are listed in the small ads of contemporary newspapers. For example, the Cork Journal of 15 March 1762 advertised:
‘To be sold for account of D.F. a black negro boy aged about 14 years, remarkably free from vice and a very handy willing servant’.
Other ads listed purchasers’ specific requirements, as in Williamson’s Liverpool Advertiser of 29 April 1756:
‘Wanted immediately, a black boy. He must be of a deep black complexion, and a lively, humane disposition, with good features, and not above 15, nor under 12 years of age.’
According to the beliefs of the time, the darker an individual’s colour the more exotic they were deemed to be, and therefore the more expensive. The dark skin and facial features of the Elys’ servant seem to be African or West Indian but may be read as those of subcontinental India. Precise geographical origin did not always matter; what did matter was that the origin was remote and mysterious. Kauffman’s inclusion of a black figure, the only one to be seen in her extensive output, raises a number of questions to do with the black figure in art and in society.
Black servants could be an allusion in portraits to overseas trading interests, as is seen in William Hogarth’s Wollaston family. A black figure could also be a pictorial contrast to rows of white faces. Black servants, especially boys, were often treated as prized possessions and fashionable accessories, simultaneously useful and decorative, domestic but exotic, who were decked out in elaborate livery or uniforms. They were valued aesthetically for their exoticism and usually protected and treated well so as to safeguard their financial value, although on reaching adulthood males were sometimes thrown out and returned to slavery in the West Indies. They were human commodities in an age that indulged its appetites for the colours, tastes and textures of the world beyond Europe, the expanding world of imperial possession.