On view at the Frick Collection until May 25, “Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture” features paintings by one of the two leading British artists of the 18th Century. Contemporaries and rivals, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Thomas Gainsborough were each founders of the Royal Academy. Almost exclusively, they divided between them the task of skillfully portraying all the members of England’s aristocracy eager to be seen as epitomizing elegance.
In her fascinating 2022 online article “The Visible Invisibility of Black People in Aristocratic Portraiture,” playwright, director, producer and journalist Marjorie H. Morgan explained how showing enslaved African servants alongside the subjects of such works, was a trope frequently employed to elevate their whiteness “beauty” and status.
Unlike Reynolds, Gainsborough never did this. His sole Black sitter was Ignatius Sancho, whose likeness is included in the exhibition. Born in bondage and orphaned on a British slave ship, Sancho eventually progressively gained employment, useful introductions, an education, and his freedom through the intervention of John, second Duke of Montagu, and his wife Mary, a daughter of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough.
When immortalized by Gainsborough in 1768, Sancho was engaged as a valet by his late patron’s son-in-law, George, first Duke of Montagu. Still in service, he was not pictured in the elaborate Montagu livery (uniform) he would have worn when working. Rather, he was shown with dignity in the sedate attire of a gentleman. And so he was.
Bequeathed an annuity of £30 and a year’s salary on the death of the second duchess in 1751, Sancho later became the owner of a grocery store he operated with his wife and their seven children. He gained celebrity as an abolitionist, musician, and writer. Referred to as “The extraordinary Negro,” Sancho was only the second known Afro-Briton to vote in parliamentary elections. At his death in 1780, he became the first to receive an obituary in the British press.
With American millionaires like steel magnate Henry Clay Frick, who created the Frick Collection, eager to emulate the pomp and taste of British nobility, few works of art were more valuable than portraits by Gainsborough. Frick owned five, displayed in the library and dining room of his palatial house-turned-museum.
In 1921, when railroad tycoon Henry E. Huntington purchased “The Blue Boy,” a 1770 painting of an anonymous apprentice dressed like a 17th-century prince in the manner of Sir Anthony Van Dyke, for £182,000 (around $728,000 today), it was the highest price ever paid for a painting at that time. Equivalent in purchasing power to approximately more than $13 million, it cost double what your average Gainsborough would be likely to realize nowadays. Indicative of societal evolution, the artist’s one-of-a-kind depiction of Sancho almost certainly would go for far more than the adjacent picture of his patron, the second Duke of Montague’s daughter, Mary, first Duchess of Montague of the second creation.
This seems to be attested to by the record price achieved in 2023 for a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds. His bravura portrait of Polynesian Omai of the Friendly Isles realized £50,000,000 (approximately $67,511,750 today), which was justified, said broadcaster and art dealer Philip Mould, “in a declining market in eighteenth century art thanks to the unusual diversity of the painting’s subject … it is hard to put a price on such a rare full-length portrait of a man of color.”
What makes this all emblematic of an aspect of racial inequality is knowing how in 1981, when entertainer Bill Cosby acquired Henry Ossawa Tanner’s “The Thankful Poor” for $287,000, it established a precedent as the record for the price paid for a work by an African American artist. During his lifetime, Tanner never sold a work for more than $3,000.
Since then, the international art market has evolved further. The stock of centuries old white lords and ladies has greatly diminished, particularly versus slave narratives by Karen Walker, enigmatic portraits by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, history paintings by Basquiat and Kerry James Marshall, or sculpture by Richard Hunt.
Highlighting Sancho’s largely forgotten acclaim as a composer, the Frick hosted “Exploring the Music of Ignatius Sancho,” a scholarly midday lecture, on Sunday. Presented by members of the early music ensemble Ruckus, with counter tenor Reginald Mobley, it outlined the harsh reality of racist hostility Sancho encountered despite his renown, and the fugitive and elusive historical record that so often is the legacy of the marginalized, no matter how illustrious their reputation might have been in life. “The incremental piecing together of fragmentary clues about Sancho’s life is like completing a puzzle. One never knows in what archive, diary, or newspaper, new revelations will emerge!” This informative talk was followed by an early evening concert featuring examples of the scant known survivors of the Black man’s oeuvre.
The virtuosity of the performance was fantastic. We were warned there would be 12 country dances for harpsichord, but they were transcribed to include seven on strings, a flute, and bassoon. Most delightful of all was the sparkling song of cherubic counter tenor Mobley. The frothy delicacy of his sparkling arpeggios was in vivid contrast with his formidable stature.
Another dramatic juxtaposition was the energetic and exuberant playing of music from so long ago. The Ruckus collaborative has deservedly been billed as “the world’s only period-instrument rock band” (San Francisco Classical Voice). Certainly, there was always a relatively rustic vitality associated with such music, bringing to mind Jan Bruegel the Elder’s “Wedding Feast.” Appealing across generational and class boundaries alike, we are not talking about the minuet’s refinement. Were Sancho’s frolics, the steps so carefully noted on his scores, really so filled with the abandon of a hootenanny such as this? Whether it was an authentically correct interpretation is beyond my meager knowledge, but judging by a standing ovation, with long and enthusiastic applause, Sancho’s modern-day audience adored it.