Podcast: Gainsborough's Ignatius Sancho
September 29 2020
Picture: BP2
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Black Presence in British Portraiture Network have published a podcast focusing on Thomas Gainsborough's portrait of Ignatius Sancho (National Gallery of Canada).
The podcast is chaired by Gretchen Gerzina Paul Murray Kendall Professor of Biography at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and includes an interview with the actor and writer Paterson Joseph. Joseph has written a play on the sitter's life, which includes Sancho's career as a composer, actor, anti-slavery campaigner who became the first person of African descent to vote in a British General Election.
The podcast is free to listen to via. Spotify.
Update - Today (1st October 2020) Google have payed tribute to Ignatius Sancho in their header icon. The sad irony is that they have picked a portrait of him which many doubt shows Sancho. This painting, catalogued as a Portrait of an African, is by Allan Ramsay and held in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum. Why didn't Google use the Gainsborough portrait?
