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Acquired by the International Slavery Museum in
2018, the "Am Not I A Man And A Brother' painting depicts an
enslaved African, kneeling, bound in chains and looking to the
sky.
It is based on a design commissioned by the Committee for the
Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787 and was used by the potter
Josiah Wedgwood to campaign against slavery, making it one of
the first instances of a logo used for a political cause.
"We've done quite significant conservation on the painting,"
Laura Pye, director of National Museums Liverpool, told Reuters.
"(The) conservation team has done an incredible job of cleaning
it up. So I don't think there's anyone that's seen the painting
as it currently looks."
August 23 is the International Day for the Remembrance of the
Slave Trade and its Abolition. The painting is still being
restored and is due to go on display later this year.
In the biggest deportation in known history, weapons and
gunpowder from Europe were swapped for millions of African
slaves who were then shipped across the Atlantic to the
Americas.
Millions of African men, women and children were torn from their
homes and shackled into one of the world’s most brutal
globalized trades between the 15th and 19th centuries. Many died
in merciless conditions.
Those who survived endured a life of subjugation on sugar,
tobacco and cotton plantations. Britain abolished the
trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1807 although the full abolition
of slavery did not follow for another generation.
(Reporting by Phil Noble; writing by Kate Holton; editing by Guy
Faulconbridge, William Maclean)
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