Museum changes name of 'African' painting

RAMM says it's now 'Man in red suit'

A Devon museum has renamed its most renowned pieces of artwork to avoid assumptions that the person it represents may not be British.

The painting, which has been at the Exeter's Royal Albert Memorial Museum since 1943, and formerly known as ‘Portrait of an African,’ is now to be known as 'Portrait of a Man in a Red Suit.'

It is of a young black man in eighteenth century finery, including a scarlet jacket and waistcoat, who stares directly at the viewer.

The RAMM says it's changing the name "to more accurately reflect its history and sitter" - although who the sitter may be isn't really known.

In the 1960s, it was thought he could be author and slavery abolitionist Olaudah Equiano (c.1745-1797), and that speculation remained until 2006 when, writing in the art magazine Apollo, former RAMM curator John Madin proposed another anti-slavery campaigner Charles Ignatius Sancho (c.1729-1780).
 
The museum says: "As ideas around the identity of the portrait shifted through the decades so too did the title of the work. By 2019 it was known as ‘Portrait of an African (probably Ignatius Sancho)."
 
Julien Parsons, senior collections officer at RAMM says: "Bearing in mind growing historical evidence for a thriving community of African-Britons in Georgian England’,’it seems inappropriate to continue to label ‘our man’ as African rather than British, or indeed some other nationality."
 
Last month, experts assembled by London’s Courtauld Institute of Art and the Royal Academy visited RAMM to reconsider the painting’s title, and chose ‘Portrait of a Man in a Red Suit’
 
Exeter City Council lead for culture Cllr Laura Wright says: ‘This enigmatic portrait is one of the stars of RAMM’s collection, and it is important to us that the painting’s title accurately reflects the conversations around its sitter, and broader conversations about Black Britons through history."
 
Mr Parsons is hopeful that a combination of history and science may yet lead the museum to the true identity of the Man in a Red Suit. "Please don’t take this as an acknowledgement of failure,’ he says. ‘I still believe the sitter and artist are unknown rather than unknowable, and work continues."
 
Read Julien Parsons’ full blog on the ‘Portrait of a Man in a Red Suit’ here: rammcollections.org.uk/research-blog