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 Runaway 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.