19. Before Moody: Black Artists and British Art History Before 1923

According to longstanding narratives of British art history, the history of Black artists in Britain begins with the arrival of the Jamaican sculptor Ronald Moody in England in 1923. Before this date, Black subjects are readily visible —occasionally as named sitters, but more often as unnamed figures within portraits of wealthy white patrons. Yet the presence of Black artists before Moody has been obscured by what Eddie Chambers describes as a process of ‘invisible-ising’. This panel asks what it means to write a British art history before Moody—that is, to establish a history of something that has long presumed to be absent.

Emerging research suggests that Black artistic practice has a much longer history in Britain than existing narratives allow. For example, recently digitised archives have brought renewed critical attention to the father-and-son silhouettists William Hamlet Sr and William Hamlet Jr as ‘m[e]n of colour’ who worked for the aristocracy and royal family from about 1783, whose work has been obscured thanks to the historically low status held by silhouette portraiture. We suggest that these examples stand not as isolated exceptions (or new ‘firsts’), but as evidence of a longer history of Black creative production in Britain, obscured by fragmentary archives and disciplinary hierarchies that have long since ‘invisible-ised’ it.

We invite papers that engage closely with specific artists, creative practitioners, art objects and media that expand and complicate the existing parameters of the history of Black artists in Britain, as well as those reflecting conceptually on the challenges of writing British art history before Moody.

Themes: Black Artists; British Art History; disciplinary hierarchies

Lead Convenor: Lizzie Robles, University of Bristol, United Kingdom

Co-convenors: Freya Gowrley, University of Bristol, United Kingdom

To submit a Paper to this Session, please follow the guidance on our website and complete the AAH 2027 Call for Papers Proposal Submission Form.