Interracial Double Portraits

Interracial Double Portraits

Portrait of Dido Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray

and the attribution to David Martin (1737-1797)

By Valeria Vallucci

David Murray, Portrait of Dido Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray, late 1770s, Scone Palace, Perth

The recent Royal Academy exhibition Entangled Pasts 1768-Now: Art, Colonialism and Change was part of a global effort by art institutions to re-examine and re-interpret both history and art in light of new understandings of colonialism. The exhibition explored the Royal Academy’s own associations with British imperialism and the relationship between ‘modernity and coloniality.’[1] It presented an impressive range of contemporary artifacts and historic paintings that have been recognised around the world as providing valuable insights into Black British history and the Atlantic slave trade. Included amongst them was a portrait of the late 1770s by David Martin (1737-1797) depicting Dido Belle (1761-1804) and Lady Elizabeth Murray (1760-1825). The portrait is one which the gallery is very familiar with; in 2018 Philip investigated and confirmed its authorship on an episode of BBC’s Fake or Fortune? (Series 7). On loan from Scone Palace (Perth), the Scottish seat of the Earls of Mansfield, it once hung at Kenwood House and was loosely attributed to Johann Zoffany (1733-1810). Dido and Elizabeth were great-nieces to the Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, William Murray, 1^st Earl of Mansfield (1705-1793).

Dido was the daughter of Admiral Sir John Lindsay (1737-1788), Commander-In-Chief of the British Navy, and an enslaved woman called Maria. She was brought up between Kenwood House and Bloomsbury by the childless Mansfields together with her cousin Lady Elizabeth, who was also a maternal orphan. The two girls kept each other company, were educated together, but had different roles and allowances within the family. Dido contributed to the running of the house, sometimes acting as secretary to her great-uncle and managing the dairy and poultry yard.[2] An obituary printed in 1788 stated that Dido’s ‘amiable disposition and accomplishments have earned her the highest respect from all his Lordship’s relations and visitants’.[3]

At the Royal Academy exhibition, the double portrait was shown in the section ‘Sites of Power: Conflict and Ambition’ to highlight the ambivalence of Lord Mansfield’s attitude to slavery.[4] Politicians and actors admired Mansfield’s prodigious oratorical skills. He was also highly respected by tradesmen for his swiftness of action and common sense.[5] During the James Somerset case of 1772 he famously denounced slavery as being ‘so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it’.[6] Yet he was always careful not to damage businesses that traded overseas. This conflict is explored well in Belle (2013), the romantic period drama directed by Amma Asante based on Dido’s story, which focuses on Lord Mansfield’s ruling in the Zong case (1783) and on the double portrait as evidence of his thinking.[7]

The double portrait received considerable media attention after the release of Belle (2013) and the publication of Paula Byrne’s Belle: The True Story of Dido Belle (2014). The rediscovery of Dido Belle’s story – the daughter of a slave who became a member of an aristocratic British family – inspired a wider conversation about race, slavery, and abolition. The painting, in turn, is now recognised as being of national historical importance. 

When the portrait was later reframed at Scone Palace the accompanying plate erased her completely:

Still taken from BBC One, Fake or Fortune?, ‘A Double Whodunnit’, Series 7, Episode 4.

The breakthrough came when Philip inspected Lord Mansfield’s private account books from the late eighteenth century. These revealed a payment of £200 to David Martin on 8^th October 1776. By comparing the portraitwith another portrait by David Martin in the Mansfield collection, Lady Margery (1760s), he noticed a series of striking similarities.

For instance, the small colourful flowers catching the light on Lady Elizabeth’s hair echo Lady Margery’s hair adornments. Both ladies are painted with bright red ruby lips and elongated faces. As Philip explained, portrait painters of the time tended to impose their own ideas of how a subject should look, and this is an example of Martin’s ideas on how to paint aristocratic ladies. He also noticed similarities in the embroidery, translucence, and folds of the gauzes in both works, as well as the playful positioning of Dido’s right hand which recalls that of Lady Margery’s in her portrait.

After Philip established that an attribution to Martin was highly possible, specialist conservationists from the University of Northumbria were called in to collect samples from both portraits. They found that the white paint and the vermillion in both paintings were an exact match. As a result, Brian Allen, an authority in eighteenth century British portraiture, endorsed the attribution. Allen was particularly convinced by the distinctive handling of the silks, satins and muslins which he considered an influence from Alan Ramsay, who taught Martin.

Since this endorsement, the portrait has received a new name plate which tells a more complete story of the work and those involved in its creation.

Detail of David Murray's Portrait of Dido Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray, late 1770s.

The subject of affectionate interracial relationships in art (as opposed to the servant-master relationships such as the one in Reynolds’s Portrait of George Prince of Wales)[11]  is of great interest to the team at Philip Mould & Company, who have had the privilege of handling two early nineteenth-century interracial double portraits: a French miniature and a Northern American oil. Both works have since sold to important public collections in the USA. These works are unique and significant and like Martin’s double portrait, are infused with multiple, complex layers of history and symbolism. They offer fascinating insights and prompt questions about identity in the wake of colliding cultures; themes which in an increasingly globalised, interconnected world are more relevant now than ever before.