ADFAS Talk: The Dark Heart of Empire

Jos Hackforth-Jones speaks on "The Dark Heart of Empire - Picturing Slavery and the Movement for Abolition"

The triangular slave trade was seldom directly represented in art. However, many artists including Hogarth and Reynolds included slaves and slave owners in their portraits. This lecture will examine some of the complexities of this process. We will consider some of the abolitionist sympathies of artists such as Augustus Earle and Joshua Reynolds and the effect of the ‘turn’ against slavery and the abolition of the slave trade and the impact it had on the art of the period.

Professor Jos Hackforth-Jones has served as Director of the London Institute since 2008 and is a distinguished academic administrator, noted art historian, author, curator and lecturer. Jos has recently edited (with Iain Robertson) Art Business Today: 20 Key Topics (Lund Humphries and Sotheby’s Institute of Art, 2016). This accompanies the launch of an exciting and innovative new MA curriculum in Art Business, Contemporary Art, Fine and Decorative Art and Design and Modern and Contemporary Asian Art. Prior to her post at the Institute, Jos served as President and Provost at Richmond The American International University in London.