Rhodes scholar ‘was behind’ Oxford’s removal of painting
A RHODES scholar urged his Oxford college to remove a portrait of an 18th-century duke because he felt it was “racist and dehumanising”.
The painting of Henry Somerset, the 3rd Duke of Beaufort, was recently removed from Oxford’s Oriel College and sent on loan to Badminton House, the ancestral home where the 12th Duke currently resides.
In the portrait by Andrea Soldi, the Duke, a direct descendant of King Henry IV and Oriel benefactor, wears plush ermine robes while a black boy wearing a metal collar in the background holds his coronet.
A college source said last month that the painting had been moved “in case it offended a student”.
The Sunday Telegraph has established that its removal was the culmination of a five-year campaign started by a South African Rhodes scholar.
Alexander von Klemperer, who in 2018 was a PhD student in neuroscience at Oriel, submitted a paper to the college picture committee that November and said he was “personally troubled” by the portrait, as well as another portrait which also features a black person in the background.
“Both images are... racist depictions of people of colour as subservient and to some extent dehumanised,” he said. “The way in which portraits and people are represented in a space can deeply alter how comfortable or welcoming that space is to people.”
Dr von Klemperer, who has now left Oxford, was campaigning for the portraits to be removed.
Oriel was the epicentre of the 2020 Rhodes Must Fall protests.
The college has said that the portrait is on a temporary loan to Badminton House for safekeeping because of renovations to the Senior Library. The college says “the intention” is that it will return to its position.
Some academics are doubtful the portrait will ever come back, with one saying: “I think it is true that it has been moved as part of the renovation but whether it comes back is a different matter.” Another source said that the college “is an absolute microcosm of everything that’s wrong with Oxford”.