It's one of the most beautiful blues in the artist's palette.
A colour you'll know very well if you've ever worn blue jeans.
But this colour also tells us a much wider story.
And today I want to talk about indigo, and what it can tell us
about the histories of people beyond those explicitly depicted.
As paintings conservators
part of our role - in collaboration
with scientific conservators - is to investigate and analyse the materials
that have actually been used by artists to create the paintings.
It was actually the recent and ongoing
project here at the National Gallery looking into the legacies of British slave-
ownership that truly motivated me to start looking at, and researching into,
the legacies of colonialism, slavery and exploitation within artists' materials.
As an ethnic minority working in arts heritage
I truly feel that highlighting these incredibly important histories
can really change our understanding of paintings.
And it also makes such a difference to current communities
feeling seen, heard, appreciated and included.
My research has started
looking into this beautiful, rich pigment. indigo.
Indigo comes from a tropical plant, and the plant grows in warmer climates
and the colour is extracted through quite a complex process.
Indigo was incredibly sought-after because it was the only
natural material that people could find
between the 16th and 19th centuries which could dye material
richly and deeply blue.
And this was why Western authorities and the elite wanted this colour.
To kind of indicate their wealth and power.
This fuelled the widespread exploitation
of so many people from India to West Africa and most of the Americas.
We can see indigo pigment in use throughout the National Gallery.
But there are two paintings where,
while indigo may not be the pigment explicitly used,
the representation and legacies of the colour indigo
have an important story to tell beyond the visual.
This is the Comte de Vaudreuil.
It was painted in 1758.
You can see the Comte is dressed in a beautiful indigo-dyed velvet.
But when we look closer at the painting to see where he is pointing
a much more troubling legacy reveals itself.
He is pointing to his plantations in Saint-Domingue,
now present-day Haiti,
where thousands of West African enslaved people were trafficked to work the land
and where he amassed his vast fortune.
By 1713, the island's largest and most profitable export was indigo.
This contemporary engraving shows how the indigo was extracted
from the plants in Saint-Domingue by enslaved people, being policed by an overseer.
It was a complicated and labour-intensive task that required great skill
which was why West African people, who had been skilled in creating and using
the dye for centuries, were captured and trafficked.
But it was also a deadly process
as the fumes produced killed considerable numbers of enslaved people.
So now when we return to the painting
we suddenly see a much more complex history
and the legacies of these painful narratives.
But there is another detail that adds even more depth to the story
and one that I think creates a more hopeful legacy.
The only successful slave revolution to happen was in Saint-Domingue.
And it was the first country to abolish slavery.
And one of its leaders, Julien Raimond, was an indigo planter himself.
And here in the conservation studio we have Mrs Oswald by Johann Zoffany.
Again, like the Compte, although indigo may not have been the pigment
explicitly used to paint their clothing - as this could be Prussian blue -
she is wearing a fine indigo-dyed dress.
Not just to highlight her wealth and status, but because Mrs Oswald
herself inherited and owned indigo plantations in Jamaica
where over one hundred enslaved people were forced to work.
In addition, her husband, Richard Oswald
was the main owner of Bunce Island in Sierra Leone.
Now, Bunce Island was an incredibly horrific place.
It was the most significant slave trading outpost for the British
on the West African Coast, and Richard Oswald
traded in slaves that were skilled in things like rice and indigo planting.
And during this time indigo was such a highly-prized commodity
that you could - quote -
"exchange Indigo, pound-for-pound, for a Negro weighed naked."
So this made the commissioning of the work only possible
through the personal wealth that Mary and Richard Oswald gained
through the slave trade and through her indigo plantations.
So the 19th century
colour chemist George Field described the painter's box as being
"a museum of curiosities from every part of the universe.
For it, the mines yield their treasures, as well as the depths of the sea.
To it come Arab camel and English Ox, cuttlefish and crawling coccus.
In it, the Indian Indigo lies next to the madder of France
and the gaudy vermillion of China brightens the mummy of Egypt.
But to this description we can add,
the "stolen and violated" mummy of Egypt lies next to the "slave-produced"
Indian indigo and the "appropriated" crawling cochineal beetle.
This just exemplifies how so many
artists' materials come from all over the world and have derived
from the exploitation of people and land by Western colonial powers.
And it's their transformation
into paintings, which embodies this overlooked contribution.
So it's no surprise
that the explicit representations of ethnic minorities during this period
are almost always restricted to the background images
of dominant white European elites, as enslaved people or servants.
Silent
and nameless.
Even just focusing on one colour can truly
change and challenge what we are looking at
and how we are understanding paintings.
And Indigo is used and identified
throughout the National Gallery collection from Tintoretto to Van Dyke to Turner.
And all these images hold and exemplify
these untold and forgotten histories and legacies.
My project is continuing research
and I intend to look into other colours, pigments and materials
which also hold, and are embedded with, these interesting and important legacies.
So these include cochineal beetles from South America and Mexico
and different materials like oils and resins from India.
Highlighting and sharing these histories is incredibly important for
diverse audiences that walk around the galleries and don't explicitly see
themselves represented in the pictures.
But they are able to find a part of their history,
connect with a painting, and possibly find a voice of an ancestor.
Personally, this research has been incredibly rewarding
as I've been able to really connect on another level
with the artworks that I treat on a day-to-day basis and
exposing these histories and the untold legacies and contributions
of these exploited people and of my ancestors has truly validated
their contributions to these beautiful artworks.