Description and history
The family commissioned a painting of Dido and Elizabeth. Completed in 1779, it was formerly attributed to Johan Zoffany, [6] but, following research by the BBC TV programme Fake or Fortune? , [7] [8] it has now been verified by the Scottish National Gallery as a painting of the Scottish portraitist David Martin in the Zoffany style. [9] The family archivist stated that the painting was put in storage at Kenwood House just 3 years after Lord Mansfield's death and stayed there until the 1920s, when the family sold Kenwood House and moved their belongings to Scone Palace in Perth, Scotland.
According to Historic England, the painting is "unique in British art of the 18th century in depicting a black woman and a white woman as near equals". [10] It shows Dido alongside and slightly behind her cousin Elizabeth, carrying exotic fruit and wearing a turban with a large ostrich feather. [11] The painting is owned by the present Earl of Mansfield and housed at Scone Palace. In 2007, it was exhibited in Kenwood House as part of an exposition marking the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act 1807, together with more information about Belle. [6]
The painting is discussed by English Heritage in the following way:
The portrait of the two women is highly unusual in 18th-century British art for showing a black woman as the equal of her white companion, rather than as a servant or slave. [...] The basket of tropical fruit she carries and the turban with expensive feather that she wears suggest an exotic difference from her more conventionally styled white cousin, who is sitting reading a book.
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