IBLG

This presentation examines how Western European art has imagined, erased, distorted, and finally reclaimed the image of the Black African woman. It charts that visual history across six centuries, from medieval manuscript illuminations and Renaissance altarpieces to the self-authored works of contemporary Black women artists. At its heart lies a question both historical and urgent: how has the Black woman been seen - and who has had the right to define what she looks like?

The talk unfolds through four stages: Elimination, Anonymisation, Reclamation, and Celebration.
In the period of Elimination (13th–17th centuries), the Black woman is all but absent from canonical art. When she appears, it is in symbolic or marginal form: the Queen of Sheba in Claude Lorrain’s Seaport (1648), or dark-skinned Andromeda in classical myth, whose Ethiopian origins were gradually whitewashed by successive painters. These early depictions mark both a fascination with and a suppression of Black femininity - admired for its exoticism, denied its humanity.

Anonymisation (16th–20th centuries) brings the Black woman into clearer view, yet still without identity or voice. She is the attendant, servant, or allegory - Carracci’s anonymous sitter, Velázquez’s kitchen maid, Benoist’s “Portrait of a Negress,” Manet’s Laure in Olympia. Her image exists only in relation to others: noble whiteness, colonial luxury, artistic novelty. These works reveal a deep entanglement between beauty, race, and servitude - the aestheticization of inequality that underpinned European art’s global expansion.

The phase of Reclamation (20th–21st centuries) begins when the gaze shifts. Artists such as Maud Sulter, Lubaina Himid, Claudette Johnson, Phoebe Boswell, and Ebun Culwin seize back authorship, placing the Black woman at the centre of her own narrative. Their works assert presence, dignity, and complexity, challenging the visual traditions that excluded or silenced their predecessors. Himid’s Freedom and Change (1984) rewrites Picasso’s Two Women Running on the Beach as a liberation scene for Black women; Johnson’s portraits confront the viewer with unapologetic selfhood; Sulter’s Zabatinserts the Black muse into art history’s canon.

Finally, Celebration brings this trajectory into the present - not as triumphalism, but as recognition of resilience. The modern Black female image embodies multiplicity: the intellectual, the mother, the artist, the queen, the survivor. It connects the Queen of Sheba to Serena Williams, Laure to Lupita Nyong’o, Andromeda to Harmonia Rosales’s Creation of God (2018). Across centuries, what was once silenced becomes symphonic.

The presentation situates this visual journey within wider discourses of race and gender. Drawing on the thought of Anna Julia Cooper, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Moya Bailey, it explores how misogynoir - the specific intersection of racism and sexism directed at Black women - can be traced not only through language and politics, but through the image itself.
 
By mapping the visual evolution from Elimination to Celebration, the talk reveals both the persistence of oppression and the power of representation. It invites viewers to see anew: to recognise the artistry, strength, and humanity that have always been present - even when history refused to look.

​NOTE: This article is a ChatGPT-generated summary of my talk. It outlines the flow and key points as I deliver the presentation, but it does not include the many intervening stories that support the proposition in the title.

​In his 1760 portrait  Francis Williams shows himself measuring  and presenting  the 1759  path of the returning Halley Comet as seen Jamaica at that time, in doing so proving Newton’s theories on the motions of celestial, bodies described in Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), popularly known as  Principia. Just as Sir Arthur Eddington  in 1919 measured the deflection of starlight passing near the Sun during the eclipse and found that it closely matched Einstein's calculations in doing so proving Einstein’s Theory of General, Relativity.

You have closed the Sainsbury Wing till 2025, removing the 16th century German art from display, which unlike the Italian works from the same period, have not been rehung throughout the Gallery…what happened to the German works?
 
For the Image of the Black in the National Gallery  tour 16th century German art is foundational. The four of the key images and ideas - the Black Queen of Sheba, the Moor’s head, the Black St Maurice, the Black king,   - I discuss in the tour have their origin in Germany from around that period.

Specifically, I would ask that you put Dürer back on display, ideally the portrait of his father, failing that any of the Dürer’s works you have.
 
Thank you
Michael I. Ohajuru
[email protected]
Image of the Black in London Galleries
 
PS And while you are at it you could think about completing your collection of 16th century German art by acquiring an Adoration with a Black king and a Black St Maurice - both quinessential figures in 16th century German art . If you haven’t the funds to buy, why not negotiate some long-term loan or swop with a German gallery, they have many examples of both.

Dear Michael,
​
Thank you for emailing the National Gallery

The Sainsbury Wing is undergoing a major refurbishment for the forthcoming bicentenary of the National Gallery under the NG200 scheme. Please see the link here https://ng200.org.uk/

In preparation for this, all the rooms in the Sainsbury Wing have been decanted. Due to limitations of space, not all the paintings from Sainsbury Wing can be rehung in other parts of the Gallery.
Of the works you mentioned, only our fully autograph Dürer 'St Jerome' will go on display. However, some of our early German works have been rehung in rooms 16,17 and 27. From next Wednesday you will also be able to view further German works in room 25 after a rehang in there is complete. For further up-to-date information on painting locations please see our online interactive map: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/visiting/floorplans/level-2. 

Please be assured that I have forwarded all your comments, including those regarding potential purchase or loan of mentioned paintings, to our curatorial team for their consideration.
 We would like to thank you for your feedback as it helps us evaluate the service we offer.  

We look forward to welcoming you back to the Gallery soon.


Kind regards, 
Ivan
Visitor Information Coordinator​

The National Gallery
Trafalgar Square
London WC2N 5DN
020 7747 2885
www.nationalgallery.org.uk

Open email to: [email protected] Monday, 31 October 2022
 
Subject: Where is Ronald Moody in 1930 Room and Frank Bowling in 1960 Room?
 
Where are the works Ronald Moody in the 1930 Room and Frank Bowling in the 1960 Room? As two of the earliest Black artists in your collection Moody and Bowling demand a space in Walk Through British Art, if Tate is to meet its declared aim to share art in all its complexity and diversity. Both have been in those rooms but now their absence leaves a big hole in telling the story of the Black presence in British art –Image of the Black in Tate Britain.
 
I fully appreciate that curating demands choices have to made but I would argue that there are some works and/or themes that are core to Tate’s collection, in fact define the collection. Think of the British Museum without the Rosetta Stone or the Louvre without the Mona Lisa or Imperial War Museum without a piece by a war artist. So not to see Ronald Moody’s work in Walk Through British Art in 1930 Room and Frank Bowling’s work in the 1960 Room was deeply disappointing as both are core the story of Black British art in Tate’s collection
 
Moody is the first Black artist’s work in your collection so, his work has to an integral part of the 1930 Room if its hang is to demonstrate Tate Britain’s complexity and diversity. His absence from the room is a hard to understand. I am reduced to discussing the Black presence via John Skeaping’s Akua-Ba having missed the opportunity to discuss the first Black artist in Tate’s collection as his work is in store.
 
For exactly the same aim Bowling’s work should be in the 1960 Room as his white contemporaries such as Bridget Riley and David Hockey both of whom featured in Whitechapel Gallery’s seminal 1965 New Generation exhibition; Bowling was excluded, he reported he was advised by the director ‘England is not yet ready for an artist of colour’.

I appreciate that Bowling is included in Sixty Years: The Unfinished Conversation which is fine but as I have argued he was an integral part of the 1960 Room so if this room is to show the ‘complexity and diversity’ you claim then he should be in both spaces. Equally Moody’s work should be put back in the1930 Room.
​
Please let me know your plans to put the works of Moody and Bowling back into Walk Through British Art in order that Tate can show the ‘complexity and diversity’ of its collection.
 
Regards
Michael I. Ohajuru
[email protected]
Image of the Black in London Galleries

Update 2nd Nov 2022

Received a positive,  prompt response to my tweet annoucing my open emial

Followed by detailed, considered email which included the following......

I hope you will be pleased to hear that Frank Bowling's work will be central to our 1960s galleries. Unfortunately, for conservation reasons, Ronald Moody's work from the 1930s cannot currently be included in our inter-war displays. However, Moody's work will be included in the gallery dedicated to the post-war period with a significant wood carving from our collection.  
from email from Tate 31 October 2022

Along with an invitation to see the new hang once it is complete in Dec. I will be taking them up on that invite and reporting back in December.
​

Following a talk on the Black Magus: Power and Magnificence in Renaissance Europe  a response to Rosa-Johan Uddoh’s monumental procession of Black Magi seen in Breaking Point part of Practice Makes Perfect installation I  was asked to name my favourite Adoration
 
I found I couldn’t it! It had be my favourite three Adorations, each a favourite for different reasons.

Number ONE Black Magus 
 
The Adoration from the V&A’s collection will always be my favourite as it was the one that I began this journey with. It has all the Black Magus attributes – last in line, exotic dress, flamboyant poise and a gold earring. In addition, the four individual fleur-de-lis  reflect the creative freedom of Gothic architect - that Gothic freedom is very British - in contrast to the constraints of classic architecture seen in the exact replication of columns.

Number TWO Black Magus 
 
Paulo Veronese’s 1578 Adoration at the National Gallery its Black Magus has all four attributes of the Black Magus in a large wonderfully rich colourful setting. I love how Veronese uses complementary colours to create a lively, vibrant image, minded of the Impressionism seen in Monet’s Impressionism Sunrise.

Number THREE Black Magus 

This Adoration by the wonderfully enigmatic Netherlandish  painter Hieronymus Bosch from the Met in New York I first came across it in Rosa's work. And even surrounded by all those Black Magi Bosch’s stood out. Demonstrating all the attributes of the Black Magus – the earring, the dress, the pose and his position.  Bosch has him standing up right and haughty with his nose in the air with an arrogant distancing look and covered in, almost weighed down by gold. I love it!

Twice in the past week I have read that image of the Black Magus has its origins in slavery both times from leading white Western institutions who appear to have only one lens for the observation of  Black history - slavery. All Black history leads back to slavery in their eyes. This is wrong. The Black Magus in Adoration images does not have its roots in slavery, The image has a rich and complex history which is rooted in bible study, courtly practice and artistic tradition

The first time was a piece in the Guardian which included the sensationalist statement:

The emergence of a realistically portrayed black character in Renaissance art reflected ….. a seismic shift in global events as European ships, led by Portugal and Spain, explored the Atlantic and established trading – and slaving – outposts on the African coast. 
The Guardian Jonathan Jones Mon 21 Dec 2020 

I was so incensed by this poorly researched and ill-informed piece I wrote a series of tweet of which sought  to correct the piece's error.

The second time was Getty Museum blog post about their exhibition Balthazar A Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance Art (November 19, 2019–February 16, 2020):

[I]t would take nearly 1,000 years for European artists to begin representing Balthazar, the youngest of the three kings, as a black man. Why? The explanation can be found through a closer look at the history of this period—specifically, in the rise of the African slave trade in mid-1400s.                   
​Getty Museum Blog May 9, 2019 , updated November 19, 2019 

No tweet this time to this inaccurate miss-leading statement I will respond in this blog post to the closing sentence of their blog post  (sic) We invite your input on this work, our approach, and what we have shared here. I accept that invitation

The idea that one of the three Magi could be Black, predates White Western European chattel slavery - the Atlantic trade in enslaved African people dates from the 15th century. Consequently the Black Magus image predates that trade as it is first recorded in the mid 14th century Holy Roman Empire Bohemia.

​The image was not a response to what the Guardian calls a "seismic shift in events led by slavery"'  nor was it as the Getty museum says due "specifically, [to] the rise of the African slave trade in mid-1400s." Its origin is complex, on the one hand  rooted in the age old conflict between church and state - Pope and Emperor - on the other what can only be called  Renaissance cognitive dissonance as ideas and images became conflated.

The Roman theologian Tertullian was the first  to suggest that the Magi were kings basing his idea on an interpretation of Psalms 72:10-11 ‘The kings of Tarshish....the kings of Sheba and Seba will present him gifts. All kings will bow down to him and all nations will serve him’.  There were other Adoration prophesies to be found in the Old Testament though more obscure -  Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon and ‘three mighty men’ visiting David. Solomon and David were both kings of the Jews.

The emergence and development of the black Magus was complicated by myths and themes around two other blacks - Prester John, the mythical Ethiopian King and the Queen of Sheba – their iconography complicated and contaminated that of the black Magus.

The image with two white and one black magus also represented the whole of mankind paying homage to the infant Christ, as the bible teaches - all nations should be baptized (Mat 28:19)  and  all men should come to the Lord (1 Tim 2:4)  as there be one flock and one shepherd (John 10:16). This was the Church welcoming to blacks seeing their presence as one of the manifestations of the Golden Age written in Revelations 20 1:7.

It is safe to say is that Cologne played an important role in the mid fourteenth century and perhaps earlier in portraying one of the Magi as black : the patron saint of the city was the black Saint Maurice whose representation perhaps, has its origins in the Ethiopians Frederick II (1194-1250) met on his Crusades; the city also also had the three Magi represented on its coat of arms and its Cathedral contains the shrine of the three kings.

The Black Kings entered Renaissance iconic Adorations as one of the three Kings with Hans Memling’s 1474 copy of the work of his master Hans van der Weyden with one change in the figures in the Nativity scene the young swaggering White magus Memling replaced with young Black KingMemling

​So to say that the image was a response to slavery or was specifically related slavery is incorrect and ill-informed,  its origin predates the transatlantic slave in enslaved Africans. Essentially the Adoration composition celebrates all earthly Kings coming together to pay homage  to the heavenly King - Jesus God made man, King of Heaven and Earth. 

To conclude the images of the Black Magus  has a history which began before the trade in enslaved people,  part of a very different story - slavery is NOT the only lens to consider the Black image and its  history.

​So to say that the image was a response to slavery or was specifically related slavery is incorrect and ill-informed,  its origin predates the transatlantic slave in enslaved Africans. Essentially the Adoration composition celebrates all earthly Kings coming together to pay homage  to the heavenly King - Jesus God made man, King of Heaven and Earth. 

To conclude the images of the Black Magus  has a history which began before the trade in enslaved people,  part of a very different story - slavery is NOT the only lens to consider the Black image and its  history.

Want to know more about the Black Magus - his religious, cultural and social meaning ?

See my blog Black Africans in Renaissance Europe 
or 
attend my annual 6th January Epiphany Presentation
THE BLACK KING TOUR 
Power and Magnificence
The Epiphany at the National Gallery

​Tate Britain has race attitude problem in its Restaurant which weasel words alone cannot fix.
 
Quick to give ‘guidance’ to visitors to their British Baroque exhibition that ‘Paintings in this exhibition depict Black people in a demeaning way’, while Whistler’s The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats mural in their Restaurant carries no such warning. This despite being much more graphic, much more horrific and truly much more demeaning than Benedetto Gennari’s  Duchess Mazarin Dressed as Diana.

Quoting Tate on the  mural: "As part of this Whistler depicts the enslavement of a [naked] Black child and the distress of his mother using highly stereotyped figures that were common at the time. In later scenes the boy runs behind a cart, attached to it by a chain around [the child's] neck". 

i
​Charles Aitken, the director who commissioned the work in 1927 had views which today, we would consider out of touch. Quoted in Daily Mail in 1929 racially described the presence of black figures in Stanley Spencer’s The Resurrection, Cookham “...waking from the death of humanity – the white races …occupied with things intellectual, the black races satisfied with simple tactile shapes”.
 
Appreciate that was then this is now - views, feelings, ideas have changed.
 
So rather than remove the mural, Tate might give the same thought that went into that ‘guidance’ sign for the British Baroque exhibition be given to an equivalent response to The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats, if Tate really wants to reaffirm its commitment to combating racism. For that response I propose a work of equivalent size to be on permanent display as close as possible to  Whistler's  be commissioned by Tate not from the established black artist but a fresh talent, on the rise, someone under 25, part of the generation that is on the streets, right now, proclaiming Black Lives Matter quite unlike Tate's mural.

.....and here's a screen shot from the 2013 BBC news video which reported on the restoration , it  shows one of the images...

It was great to be back at the National Gallery after four months. The attendants were brilliant, greeted us like old friends  as many of them recalled me from my doing tours there. And to see so many paintings from my tour was like meeting old  friends couldn't resist a selfie with a couple of black kings.

I was celebrating my birthday with my first trip into London in four months with a trip to the National Gallery. There were the inevitable pandemic precautions in place  - timed, ticketed entry, one way routes thru the gallery, with hand sprays in the lifts. Some of which worked to my advantage. The pandemic precautions meant there was a lot of space and time to see and contemplate the works So it was quite a lovely way to spend my birthday afternoon.

The great find and surprise was Room 32. Room 32, the largest and one of the most visited rooms of the National Gallery, displaying 17th-Century Italian Baroque paintings, newly reopened after a 21 month refurbishment project, following a £4 million donation from The Julia and Hans Rausing Trust. Hans father was the inventor of the tetra pack worth 12billion$ . It looked magnificent - shiny and new - the quality of the finish glowed everywhere from the newly laid floor to the lighting, there's a great video showing the refurbishment and and the number of dedicated folk involved. 

To my delight and surprise Room 32 was full of Image of the Black pictures, so much so I could have done a mini tour there. Sadly such tours won't be happening for perhaps another 12 months. (Currently they are on line.) This number of paintings with a black presence is complete contrast to Room 30 next door - Spanish art from the same period as Room 32, there are no black folk in the paintings, if you want to know why have a look of my review of Carmen Fracchia book Black but Human   I took a few pictures in Room 32.......

 Here's the complete list  of Image of the Black pictures in Room 32:

Mattia Preti The Marriage at Cana
Johann Liss Judith in the Tent of Holofernes
Luca Giordano Perseus turning Phineas and his Followers to Stone
Carlo Dolci The Adoration of the Kings
Francesco Solimena Dido receiving Aeneas and Cupid disguised as Ascanius

My very favourite was Perseus turning Phineas and his Followers to Stone which like Judith in the Tent of Holofernes has an explicit Black presence , one that you can see on the canvas but it also has an implicit, hidden Black presence. The explicit presence in Judith in the Tent of Holofernes is its black maid servant holding the basket to take the severed head of Holoferines while for Perseus turning Phineas and his Followers to Stone it's the fallen black fighter in the picture's lower foreground. Both paintings have not just those explicit presences but each has an   implicit Black presences - Judith in the Tent of Holofernes is to to found in who donated the work to the Gallery while for Perseus turning Phineas and his Followers to Stone it is found in the woman who the two protagonists are fighting over.

I have one small gripe abut the current collection which the Lockdown has thrown into focus as I prepared for my online talks. Where are the Black presences in Room 62  fifteenth century Cologne and North Western Germany ? 

First, why should the Room have a black presence ? Because there were four possible significant black presences from this period - the Black Queen of Sheba, the Black King in the Adoration picture , the Moors head crest and the Black St Maurice - at various times they were symbols of power and status.used by The Holy Roman Empire's clergy and the nobility.

There are many examples from the period especially of the Black King and St Maurice. I would be particular keen for the National to purchase a St Maurice., as this would bring the Room to life, truly reflect the art from the period and  make the National connect further and better with a more diverse audience.

​The Uffizi Gallery in Florence is celebrating Black History Month [1] 2020 with an online virtual exhibition to show the Black African presence in its collection On Being Present. A presence it admits that  even those with an acute eye for detail might miss, it is certainly not due to the lack of Black Africans in its collection as there are over 20. Their presence says more about what they call ‘the historical and art historical frameworks within which viewers navigate these spaces contributing to their obscurity’ ie the viewer simply does not see them, the Black African figure is hidden in plain site.

I am very familiar with the apparent invisibility of the Black African figure from my own tours, evidenced by the shock on many folks' faces when the Black figure is pointed out to them. In the interests of fairness it should be pointed out most times the Black African figures are not the subject of the painting, they are supporting, marginalised figures, which means they can be easily overlooked in favour of the dominant figure or narrative as portrayed by the artist. 

This to me is what makes the Uffizi's virtual exhibition so special as there are works in which the black figure is central and unmissable such as the two wonderful portraits of Benedetto d’Angola Silva as well as Black figure's more conventional role as a marginal, supporting, as seen in Vittore Carpaccio’s  Gli alabardieri.

I was delighted to see that I knew , having  corresponded with them,   three of the nine art historians who have written commentaries for this virtual exhibition and they had each made a contribution to my John Blanke Project - a contemporary Art and Archive project celebrating John Blanke the Black trumpeter to courts of Henry VII & Henry VIII - Kate Lowe, Paul Kaplan, and Temi Odumosu
​
The exhibition's commentaries were insightful and informative,  there was one that particularly stood out for me,  that was Dennis Geronimus on Piero di Cosimo Perseus frees Andromeda. 
He made two related comments which made me reflect.

To conclude, On Being Present clearly highlights the physical Black African presence in Renaissance Italy and Europe in doing so it ‘confirm[s] the presence of the continent of Africa in the consciousness of the commissioners of these works from a range of artists across time and speak to the incredible cultural exchange that was taking place when these works were being made, indeed.....[t]his presence is simultaneously a physical reality and a metaphysical one both of which guided the shaping of “Western” history with its inclusions and omissions.” This online exhibition certainly makes that explicit and implicit presence manifest and I thoroughly recommend it. 


1. Black History Month in America is February in Great Britain we celebrate it in October 
2. The Black Andromeda Author(s): Elizabeth McGrath, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 55 (1992), pp. 1-18,  The Warburg Institute,  http://www.jstor.org/stable/751417, Accessed: 05-04-2018 07:06 UTC
​

While researching in the National Portrait Gallery online came across this wonderful water colour of Ras Makunnan or Mäkonnen the father of Emperor Haile Selassie I by Sir Leslie Ward for 12  February 1903 edition of Vanity Fair

​Ward worked for Vanity Fair magazine. Where he produced caricatures of many of the leading characters of the day, including artists, athletes, royalty, statesmen, scientists, authors, actors, soldiers and scholars. Ward worked under the pseudonym 'Spy'.