The Captive Slave (Ira Aldridge)  1827

This arresting depiction of an enslaved man was first exhibited in London in 1827 and constituted a timely abolitionist appeal in the years immediately preceding the British Emancipation Act of 1833. Simpson positioned his subject with his head and eyes raised toward the heavens in an echo of the conventional poses for Christian saints and martyrs. The artist thus used fam...