Ben Elwes Fine Art will be exhibiting two paintings concerned with race at Master Paintings Week 2010. The gallery has gained a reputation for covering the subject and has sold recently important anti-slavery paintings to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Smithsonian. Continuing this theme will be a major picture by British artist William Gale, “The Ranaway Slave” depicting a mulato female slave being captured by an American Bounty Hunter. Exhibited in 1856 it was part of the outraged response, both political and artistic, to the notorious Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Under this law even non-slave states were obliged to return escapees to their owners causing fury amongst abolitionists. The gallery will also be showing a fine portrait of an African by the French painter Léon de Troy.

Amongst other works, Ben Elwes Fine Art will also be exhibiting two fascinating portraits:

Master Paintings Week 2009

Joseph Bonaparte - newly discovered paintings from the Château de Mortefontaine

Among the exceptional works selected for the 2009 event, Ben Elwes Fine Art exhibited two large landscape paintings with a fascinating rediscovered royal provenance. The pair was commissioned from the French neo-classical artist Hyacinthe Dunouy (1757-1843) by the brother of Napoleon, Joseph Bonaparte, King of Naples and later also King of Spain. Signed and dated 1806, they show views of Joseph’s estate at the Chậteau de Mortefontaine. One also includes a depiction of Joseph hunting.

On the downfall of Napoloeon in 1814, Joseph was forced to abdicate the Spanish throne. He subsequently moved to Philadelphia, taking much of his important art collection. His new home at Point Breeze, in New Jersey, became the centre of a Bonapartist personality cult, which out lived Joseph, who died July 28 1844 in Florence, but was continued with his much-feted daughter Zénaïde and her husband and cousin, Charles-Lucien Bonaparte.

The Point Breeze collection, much of which remains untraced, was dispersed in the 1840s. The newly-discovered provenance and topography of the pair by Dunouy is therefore of great trans-Atlantic significance.