Artist and Empire
Tate Britain, London
David Neita on an exhibition that revisits the empire with great passion
Empire casts a long shadow over Britain and museums are among those institutions where this legacy can be seen, particularly in their collections. Museums have also tried to help the public understand the impact of this history on life today, most notably at the now closed British Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol.
The latest example is Artist and Empire at Tate Britain, which tackles the topic through 200 paintings, drawings, photographs, sculpture and artefacts. To visit the exhibition is to enter a virtual history book, albeit one written by the emperor with a few edits allowed by contemporary creatives.
In this case the “writings” are artworks and they accomplish far more than the subtitle of the exhibition, Facing Britain’s Imperial Past, suggests. They go beyond history to tell us something about the present, and even the future.
A diverse range of artworks is on view. Asafo flags by Fante artists of the Gold Coast, Africa, for example, are suspended from the ceiling while some works, including Andrew Gilbert’s British Infantry Advance on Jerusalem, are assembled as an installation on the floor.
The first room, Mapping and Marking, displays an array of contrasting maps: Britain finds itself at the centre of the world in Leslie MacDonald Gill’s 1945 Cable & Wireless Great Circle Map, while it tries to compete in size with India in Walter Crane’s Imperial Federation: Map of the World Showing the Extent of the British Empire in 1886. At the base of this map lies Crane’s depiction of two black women looking up adoringly at white Britannia, consolidating the image of Rule Britannia.
The establishment of museums in Britain was generally achieved from artefacts “acquired” from foreign nations, many of which were absorbed into the empire. Indeed, it has been observed that the British Museum in London should be called anything but “British” since the bulk of its collection originates from outside the UK – but “within the empire”, the counterargument would assert. But in Artist and Empire it is not so much a collection as it is a creative depiction of empire, mostly by Britons about Britain and the power of its empire.
England’s first colony was Ireland, shown in the first work as you enter the exhibition, with a sort of pictomap describing the Siege of Enniskillen Castle, drawn by John Thomas in c.1594. The second room, Trophies of Empire, addresses object collection and its loopholes throughout the empire.
George Stubbs’s arresting painting, A Cheetah and a Stag with Two Indian Attendants, dominates the room. An interesting revelation in the work’s caption is that the gift of the cheetah (given to King George III by Sir George Pigot in 1764) would have included its Indian handlers. Indeed, it was not unusual in this period for young African boys to be given as “gifts”: the slavery abolitionist, Ignatius Sancho was bestowed as a gift to a family in Greenwich some 30 years prior to Pigot’s gift. The curators achieve a masterstroke in the third room by placing two different yet powerful pieces in such a way that, when viewed together, they achieve maximum contrast. Viewing Retribution by Edwards Armitage, which depicts Britannia as a vicious angel about to impale India (symbolised by a Bengal tiger) with her sword is hung next to the ridiculed regimented figures of Andrew Gilbert’s British Infantry Advance on Jerusalem.
This juxtaposition achieves two opposing sentiments simultaneously: powerful propaganda and self-deprecation. The former work, made during the British empire, extols it while the latter piece, created post-empire, denigrates it.
The powerhouse of this room, entitled Imperial Heroics, is The Secret of England’s Greatness (Queen Victoria Presenting a Bible in the Audience Chamber at Windsor) by Thomas Jones Barker, which portrays the Bible being presented to a kneeling African prince by the standing British queen. It’s a work steeped in symbolism: her body shields a throne decorated with lions, an animal seen as an emblem of Africa, but now presented as a symbol of Britain. Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s quote might be a fitting comment on this painting: “When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”
What made Britain great
Power Dressings, the fourth room in the exhibition, stays true to its title with the ornate garments evident in the works on display. An 1868 photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron shows seven- year-old Dejatch Alamayou, the son of King Theodore of Ethiopia, seen here as forlorn and powerless. With both his parents having being killed in conflict, Alamayou is depicted as a “living trophy of war”.
In the next room, we meet John Webber’s topless Poedua, the Daughter of Orio, Thomas Rowlandson’s bejewelled Rachel Pringle of Barbados and Simon van de Passe’s Europeanised portrait of Pocahontas, aged 21 – all of whom were held hostage in some way and forged their liberation in diverse ways.
Governor Arthur’s Proclamation to the Aborigines by an unknown artist depicts society and criminal justice scenes involving black and white people, but only the Europeans are depicted dispensing justice.
The last two sections of the exhibition, Out of Empire and Legacies of Empire, explore artists escaping the British context to view the wider world while the latter is about British artists of colour reinterpreting empire through revolutionary approaches.
Appropriately, the British African-Caribbean artist Sonia Boyce is given the last word in the exhibition with her self-portrait Lay Back, Keep Quiet and Think of What Made Britain so Great, which challenges visitors to do just that. It’s a fitting end to a thought-provoking exhibition.
David Neita is an art consultant and freelance journalist
Cost Undisclosed
Lead curator Alison Smith
Installation in-house
Exhibition ends 10 April
Admission Free for Museums Association members
Empire casts a long shadow over Britain and museums are among those institutions where this legacy can be seen, particularly in their collections. Museums have also tried to help the public understand the impact of this history on life today, most notably at the now closed British Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol.
The latest example is Artist and Empire at Tate Britain, which tackles the topic through 200 paintings, drawings, photographs, sculpture and artefacts. To visit the exhibition is to enter a virtual history book, albeit one written by the emperor with a few edits allowed by contemporary creatives.
In this case the “writings” are artworks and they accomplish far more than the subtitle of the exhibition, Facing Britain’s Imperial Past, suggests. They go beyond history to tell us something about the present, and even the future.
A diverse range of artworks is on view. Asafo flags by Fante artists of the Gold Coast, Africa, for example, are suspended from the ceiling while some works, including Andrew Gilbert’s British Infantry Advance on Jerusalem, are assembled as an installation on the floor.
The first room, Mapping and Marking, displays an array of contrasting maps: Britain finds itself at the centre of the world in Leslie MacDonald Gill’s 1945 Cable & Wireless Great Circle Map, while it tries to compete in size with India in Walter Crane’s Imperial Federation: Map of the World Showing the Extent of the British Empire in 1886. At the base of this map lies Crane’s depiction of two black women looking up adoringly at white Britannia, consolidating the image of Rule Britannia.
The establishment of museums in Britain was generally achieved from artefacts “acquired” from foreign nations, many of which were absorbed into the empire. Indeed, it has been observed that the British Museum in London should be called anything but “British” since the bulk of its collection originates from outside the UK – but “within the empire”, the counterargument would assert. But in Artist and Empire it is not so much a collection as it is a creative depiction of empire, mostly by Britons about Britain and the power of its empire.
England’s first colony was Ireland, shown in the first work as you enter the exhibition, with a sort of pictomap describing the Siege of Enniskillen Castle, drawn by John Thomas in c.1594. The second room, Trophies of Empire, addresses object collection and its loopholes throughout the empire.
George Stubbs’s arresting painting, A Cheetah and a Stag with Two Indian Attendants, dominates the room. An interesting revelation in the work’s caption is that the gift of the cheetah (given to King George III by Sir George Pigot in 1764) would have included its Indian handlers. Indeed, it was not unusual in this period for young African boys to be given as “gifts”: the slavery abolitionist, Ignatius Sancho was bestowed as a gift to a family in Greenwich some 30 years prior to Pigot’s gift. The curators achieve a masterstroke in the third room by placing two different yet powerful pieces in such a way that, when viewed together, they achieve maximum contrast. Viewing Retribution by Edwards Armitage, which depicts Britannia as a vicious angel about to impale India (symbolised by a Bengal tiger) with her sword is hung next to the ridiculed regimented figures of Andrew Gilbert’s British Infantry Advance on Jerusalem.
This juxtaposition achieves two opposing sentiments simultaneously: powerful propaganda and self-deprecation. The former work, made during the British empire, extols it while the latter piece, created post-empire, denigrates it.
The powerhouse of this room, entitled Imperial Heroics, is The Secret of England’s Greatness (Queen Victoria Presenting a Bible in the Audience Chamber at Windsor) by Thomas Jones Barker, which portrays the Bible being presented to a kneeling African prince by the standing British queen. It’s a work steeped in symbolism: her body shields a throne decorated with lions, an animal seen as an emblem of Africa, but now presented as a symbol of Britain. Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s quote might be a fitting comment on this painting: “When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”
What made Britain great
Power Dressings, the fourth room in the exhibition, stays true to its title with the ornate garments evident in the works on display. An 1868 photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron shows seven- year-old Dejatch Alamayou, the son of King Theodore of Ethiopia, seen here as forlorn and powerless. With both his parents having being killed in conflict, Alamayou is depicted as a “living trophy of war”.
In the next room, we meet John Webber’s topless Poedua, the Daughter of Orio, Thomas Rowlandson’s bejewelled Rachel Pringle of Barbados and Simon van de Passe’s Europeanised portrait of Pocahontas, aged 21 – all of whom were held hostage in some way and forged their liberation in diverse ways.
Governor Arthur’s Proclamation to the Aborigines by an unknown artist depicts society and criminal justice scenes involving black and white people, but only the Europeans are depicted dispensing justice.
The last two sections of the exhibition, Out of Empire and Legacies of Empire, explore artists escaping the British context to view the wider world while the latter is about British artists of colour reinterpreting empire through revolutionary approaches.
Appropriately, the British African-Caribbean artist Sonia Boyce is given the last word in the exhibition with her self-portrait Lay Back, Keep Quiet and Think of What Made Britain so Great, which challenges visitors to do just that. It’s a fitting end to a thought-provoking exhibition.
David Neita is an art consultant and freelance journalist
Project data
Cost Undisclosed
Lead curator Alison Smith
Installation in-house
Exhibition ends 10 April
Admission Free for Museums Association members