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Extremely rare late c18th portrait miniature depicting a gentleman of  Afro-Caribbean heritage wearing a blue jacket and white  stock, powdered wig with a ribbon tied queue.

2 inches by 1.5 inches,set to a gold bright-cut frame with navette glazed panel and gold initials FP.

I have tried in vain to discover the identity of the sitter but there is little written on Black Lives in c18th England.All we have here is the initials FP. It seems certain the sitter had reached an independent status but of his profession we know nothing.

A small number of the 10,000 people of colour living in England in the last quarter of the c18th rose from servitude to enjoy independent lives. Prominent among this class were the Westminster shopkeeper, letterist and composer Ignatius Sancho, the coal merchant and property owner Cesar Picton in Kingston-upon-Thames and the Nottingham-based George Africanus, who ran a servants’ register in the city.

Portrait Miniature of a Gentleman of Colour

£0.00Price
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