Renewed interest in painter’s work
A painting of a freed slave belonging to Stirling’s Smith Museum and Art Gallery is considered to be one of the three most important works of art depicting black men in Victorian Britain.
Inspired by the emancipation of slaves following the American Civil War, The Pipe of Freedom was painted by artist Thomas Stuart Smith in 1869 and is displayed in the institute he founded.
It is one of three paintings Smith painted of black men that year, four years after the bloody conflict to abolish slavery came to an end.
The other two, also on display at the Dumbarton Road gallery, are A Cuban Cigarette and The Fellah from Kinneh.
All three paintings have been loaned to exhibitions which have included Roots: the African Inheritance in Scotland at Edinburgh’s City Art Centre in 1997 as well as Manchester Art Gallery’s The Black Victorians – Black People in British Art in 2005.
The Smith’s collections manager Nicola Wilson said: “These are three of the most significant paintings of black men in Victorian British art and definitely highlights within our collection.
“At the time it was more common for black people to be painted as servants, Smith instead chose to paint these men not as marginal figures but as the main subject occupying the centre of the canvas.”
On the wall above the freed slave in The Pipe of Freedom is a poster publicising the sale of slaves which has been covered over by Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863 stating ‘that all persons held as slaves’ within the rebellious states ‘are, and henceforward shall be free.’
The Fellah from Kinneh was submitted to the 1869 Royal Academy exhibition in London with The Pipe of Freedom.
While The Fellah from Kinneh was accepted for the exhibition, The Pipe of Freedom was rejected on political grounds.
The Smith Art Gallery and Museum has had a lot of interest in The Pipe of Freedom over the last year.
Nicola added: “The Pipe of Freedom is a real political statement and unlike any of Smith’s other paintings in the collection, it gives us invaluable insight into the artist’s political views.
“These three works were all painted in the year of his death, I often wonder what he would have gone on to paint next.”
The painting’s profile was recently increased thanks to opera singer Peter Brathwaite’s Rediscovering Black Portraiture project, a response to a Getty Museum Challenge inviting the public to recreate famous artworks using props around the home during lockdown.
The artwork and Peter’s recreation of The Pipe of Freedom featured on the BBC Radio 3 programme The Essay as part of Black History Month.