Some years ago, David Dabydeen did a presentation on the close historical relationship between British art and sugar, articulating the association of art with the financial gains of African slavery in the West Indies. He spoke specifically to the history of Booker Tate in British Guiana, and ironically titled the presentation ‘Art of Darkness’.
Of equal significance are Dabydeen’s close studies of British art, the history of blacks in Britain in the eighteenth century, abolition and African slavery in the Caribbean. The work of English eighteenth century artist William Hogarth provided the source of his interest in blacks in British eighteenth century art and of at least two of his major works Hogarth’s Blacks (non-fiction) and A Harlot’s Progress (fiction). The great English landscape (and seascape) painter JMW Turner, and in particular the famous
