EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1.
Brief Description of item(s)
William Hoare c.1707-72
Portrait of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, called Job ben Solomon (1701-73)
1733
Oil on canvas
762 x 642 mm
Condition: The portrait has a relatively hard lining but the original paint surface
seems well preserved and in good condition, although the varnish is
discoloured and the work would benefit from cleaning. There is little evidence
of restoration. The frame is not the original but a nineteenth century example
of good quality.
2.
Context
Provenance:
Thomas Edward McGill, 1840; by descent to G.T Hertslet, the King’s Equerry
and by family descent until sold Christie’s 8 December 2009 (20).
Literature:
Thomas Bluett, Some Memoirs of the Life of Job, the Son of Solomon the
High Priest of Boonda in Africa …, London 1734.
‘Ayuba Suleiman Diallo of Bondu;, in Philip Curtin (ed), Africa Remembered:
Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade, Madison 1967.
Douglas Grant, The Fortunate Slave: An Illustration of African Slavery in the
Early Eighteenth Century, OUP 1968.
John Madin, ‘The Lost African: Slavery and Portraiture in the Age of
Enlightenment’, Apollo, August 2006, pp.34-7.
3.
Waverley criteria

Waverley 1: It is so closely connected with our history and national life
that its departure would be a misfortune on the following grounds: the
subject of the portrait, Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, is an important figure in
the history of the early transatlantic slave trade, and Britain’s
engagement in that trade. Painted in England by an English artist, it
commemorates Ayuba’s remarkable story of enslavement and
redemption at the hands of the British. Ayuba’s fame within his lifetime
and beyond rests on the account of him written and published in
London in 1734. Ayuba figures prominently in abolitionist arguments,
and his visit to Britain had a profound impact on Britain’s understanding
of West African culture, identity and religion.

Waverley 3: It qualifies as of outstanding significance for the study of
some particular branch of art, learning or history through its status as
the first British painting of a freed slave so far identified; and also the
earliest portrait so far uncovered of a named West African visitor to
Britain, presented as an individual and as an equal. As such, it is of
prime importance for the history of the development of non-European
portraiture in Britain, and the study of evolving responses within Britain
to other cultures.
DETAILED CASE
1.
Detailed description of item(s) if more than in Executive summary,
and any comments.
The sitter of this portrait, Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, or Job ben Solomon as he
was known in England, is a significant and substantial figure in the history of
the early eighteenth century transatlantic slave trade. Born to a powerful
family of Muslim clerics of the Fulbe tribe in the Bondu region of Senegambia,
Ayuba was a high-status, educated and wealthy individual who, as well as his
native language, spoke, wrote and read Arabic. At the age of 29, while on a
trading mission to sell slaves and to buy paper and cattle, Ayuba was himself
taken into captivity, enslaved and transported to Maryland on the Arabella, a
Royal African Company merchant ship of London. Put to work on a tobacco
plantation, he was imprisoned for escaping but came to the attention of the
English lawyer, Thomas Bluett, who, through Ayuba’s ‘affable Carriage’ and
the ‘easy Composure of his Countenance’, perceived he was ‘no common
Slave’. Ayuba was taken to London in 1733 and released from slavery
through money raised by public subscription. He lodged for a while with Bluett
in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, where he was popular among the local gentry,
and then at Africa House in the City, at the expense of the Royal African
Company. While in London Ayuba enjoyed celebrity status, mixing with
aristocrats such as the Dukes of Portland and Montagu, who arranged for his
presentation at Court in a ‘rich silk Dress, made up after his own Country
Fashion’. He translated Arabic manuscripts and inscriptions on medals for Sir
Hans Sloane, and made transcriptions of the Qu’ran which are still preserved
at Oxford.
Ayuba’s portrait was commissioned by his circle of supporters. The event, and
Ayuba’s reaction to the request, is recorded in Thomas Bluett’s account of
Ayuba’s experiences, Some Memoirs of the Life of Job … , published in
London in 1734, the year Ayuba returned to Africa: ‘Job’s Aversion to Pictures
of all Sorts was exceeding great’, writes Bluett, ‘insomuch that it was with
great Difficulty that he could be brought to sit for his own. We assured him
that we never worshipped any Picture, and that we wanted his for no other
End but to keep us in mind of him. At last he consented to have it drawn;
which it was done by Mr Hoare. When the Face was finished, Mr Hoare ask’d
what Dress would be most proper to draw him in; and, upon Job’s desiring to
be drawn in his own Country Dress, told him he could not draw it, unless he
had seen it, or had it described to him by one who had; Upon which Job
answered, If you can’t draw a Dress you never saw, why do some of your
Painters presume to draw God’.
This portrait is presumably the original portrait by Hoare mentioned in Bluett’s
Memoirs which until its appearance on the art market in 2009 was believed
lost and known only through Bluett’s description of the sitting and the
engravings made after it (in 1734, published as the frontispiece to the
Memoirs; and another, published in the Gentleman’s Magazine in June 1750).
The portrait is not signed but carries identifying inscriptions on the reverse (on
the lining ‘PORTRAIT OF / JOB:BEN:SOLOMON.’ and on the stretcher
‘PAINTED BY WILLIAM HOARE OF BATH IN 1733’). Ayuba appears in his
native dress, in a turban and with a copy of the Qu’ran hanging round his
neck, which proudly identifies him as a Muslim.
The portrait’s re-emergence has inadvertently cast light on the career of
William Hoare, a leading portraitist and a founding member of the Royal
Academy but who was thought to have been travelling in Italy from 1728 to
1737. In fact, Hoare is recorded in Italy only until 1732, and the date of this
portrait firmly places him in England by 1733/4. But the major significance and
importance of this portrait lies in the identity of the sitter, not the artist. Not
only is it an image of a noted individual of true importance to the early history
of the transatlantic slave trade, but it also appears to be the earliest depiction
of a named West African to have been painted in Britain. Ayuba is presented
as an individual and as a gentleman, and from Bluett’s account we know that
the stimulus for the commission was to commemorate a friendship and an
extraordinary visit. Such portraits of West Africans in Britain are rare, and
other noted examples are all later. Francis Williams, by an unknown artist, is
dated c.1745 (V&A); William Ansah Sessarakoo is only known through John
Faber’s mezzotint after Gabriel Mathias of c.1750; the well known Portrait of
an African, formerly identified as Olaudah Equiano but now thought to be
Ignatius Sancho and attributed to Allan Ramsay, is dated c.1758; and
Gainsborough’s image of the same sitter (National Gallery, Canada) is also
later. Of these, Ayuba is the only one to be shown in his native, opposed to
Western European, dress, allowing him a confident and proud identity.
2.
Detailed explanation of the outstanding significance of the
item(s).
As outlined in part 1, Ayuba Suleiman Diallo is a figure of major importance in
in Britain’s slaving history. Bluett’s published Memoirs is central to
discussions of early slave narratives, for which it is a much cited and key text.
Bluett’s description of Ayuba’s character, together with this portrait which
Bluett and his friends commissioned, act as important evidence for the
evolving, changing and increasingly enlightened attitude to black people in
Britain in the eighteenth century. Throughout his Memoirs, Bluett portrays
Ayuba as an admirable character. He stresses his dedication to Islam, his
learning, good nature, charm and wit, and his skill at reasoned argument.
Ayuba’s portrait reinforces this positive attitude in its depiction of Ayuba as a
dignified individual, who retains his native dress and openly displays his
Islamic faith, and is shown as a gentleman and an equal, and within the
conventions of polite portraiture.
Ayuba’s story of capture and survival, freedom and celebrity and safe return
to Africa, was brought to the world through the writings of Englishmen, chiefly
Thomas Bluett’s Memoirs, published in London in 1734, and also Francis
Moore’s Travels into the Inland Parts of Africa, published in London in 1738
(Moore was a Royal African Company official who knew Ayuba on his return
to Senegambia in 1734). Both works went through several editions and were
translated into French, ensuring Ayuba’s continued fame. Bluett’s account is
seen as an important early precursor to the major slave narratives of the later
eighteenth century and, like them, was influential in shaping British attitudes
and moral opinions towards slavery. Although ironically a slaveowner himself,
Ayuba became for English abolitionists a highly important example of an
African who possessed admirable human qualities, which furthered the
argument for Africans as men of feeling deserving of humanity.
There is no doubt that Ayuba’s presence in England, and the accounts of his
experience, had a great impact in Britain both at the time and later. Although
his English friends and liberators were open-minded and compassionate in
their attitude towards him, nevertheless their outlook was shaped by the times
they lived in. Ayuba’s story is presented by Bluett as one of redemption
through divine providence – Ayuba gained redemption through the providence
of God and the moral actions of those around him. Despite accepting and
admiring Ayuba’s adherence to his faith, Bluett recounts engaging him in
religious debate and presenting him with an Arabic translation of the New
Testament (most likely the leading Orientalist George Sale’s, who translated it
for the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge for circulation in the
Ottoman Empire and in Africa) in an attempt to sway him. It was a time in
which, for Englishmen, Christianity, and Protestantism, were predominant, as
was the empirical desire to convert. Yet the early eighteenth century was also
a time of academic study of Islam: Ayuba’s release from slavery and return to
Africa by the Royal African Company in 1734 was also the date of Sale’s
translation of the Qu’ran into English. Whether Sale met Ayuba in London, as
a scholar of Islam, is unknown.
Ayuba’s return to Africa also came at precisely the time that the Royal African
Company, whose main trading commodities had been salves and gold, was
easing its trade in slaves and looking for other markets. It was the Company’s
expectation that, in exchange for his redemption and generous treatment by
the English, Ayuba would work to further British interests in Africa, especially
in the gum trade. Ayuba’s story is therefore significant for contemporary
debates about the nature of Islam, the work of colonial Christian missionaries,
and English commercial interests.
As demonstrated in part 1, Ayuba’s portrait is an important early, if not the
earliest, depiction of a named West African to have been painted in England;
it appears to be the first British painting of a freed slave; and it is also an
interesting and important image of a Muslim. Black people and Muslims were
present in England from the sixteenth century, but early portraits of named
individuals are rare. Young black slaves appear as accessories and symbols
of wealth and status in the background of seventeenth-century portraits of the
aristocratic and wealthy; they appear as a ‘living ethnography’, representing
habits and costume, in travel literature and associated images; and there was
a tradition of painting resident North African Ambassadors, the earliest being
Abdel-Ouahed ben Messaoud Anoun, c.1600 (Birmingham), and others were
painted by Sir Godferey Kneller in the period 1684-1715. The latter, however,
were created within the tradition of court-commissioned diplomacy. This
privately commissioned portrait of a black visitor to England, allowed the
dignity of his own native dress and the social status of an equal, is a highly
important image in the history of the development of the iconography of nonEuropean portraiture in Britain.
Conlusion
Ayuba’s high social status in his homeland, rather than his education, intellect
and good character, was the reason that his freedom became possible. In the
history of the slave trade his story is therefore unusual and exceptional, yet
the dissemination of his narrative by various authors during the eighteenth
century ensured that his story made a lasting impact on abolitionists and
played an important role in the development of enlightened attitudes towards
black people and their moral rights. Ayuba’s narrative still plays a central part
today in scholarship surrounding slavery. His enthusiastic and positive
reception in England, where he was admired for his religious devotion, moral
qualities and intellect, and was treated as a social equal, is reflected in this
portrait which is of significance for the development of non-European
portraiture in Britain.
This portrait of him, painted by an English artist in England at the behest of his
English friends to commemorate his extraordinary journey, is a highly
significant and potent image of a famous individual connected to the British
transatlantic slave trade. The latter is a history which was given added focus
in 2007, with exhibitions and museum displays around the country marking
the 1807 abolition. As a portrait of a Muslim, a West African and a freed slave
who holds an important place in British history, in multi-cultural Britain this
portrait has a powerful resonance.
Tabitha Barber, Tate Britain
19/2/2010