“The Captured Runaway” (1856) by William Gale, 1823-1909

The Captured Runaway

William Gale, 1823-1909

1856

Oil on canvas

49 x 37 inches (126 x 96 cm)

Signed with monogram and dated WG 1856, lower right

Exhibited: London, Royal Academy of Arts, 1856 (560)

Source: Masterpieces from the John Scott Collection.

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Commentary

Slavery was a burning issue in 1856, when this painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy. Uncle Tom’s Cabin had been published four years earlier, and, as there is no evidence that William Gale went to America, it must be supposed that he was inspired to paint The Captured Runaway by a literary source in the wake of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

William Gale exhibited over 100 paintings at the Royal Academy of Arts between 1844 and 1893: he had been a prize-winning student at the RA schools. He travelled to Italy in 1851, on honeymoon, and to the Middle East in 1862 and 1867. The subject of The Captured Runaway seems to be unique among his exhibited paintings, many of which were inspired by the Bible or literature, such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Longfellow and Tennyson. He also painted portraits, Orientalist, mythological and genre works.

The subject is an indented maid who had escaped and has been captured by a bounty hunter, now asleep. The artist has painted her skin with sufficient colour for contemporaries to recognise her as a mulatto. The objects in the cabin have been closely observed and painstakingly rendered.

There is a photograph of Gale by David Wilkie Wynfield, created during the 1860s, in the National Portrait Gallery, London. It was published in the series The Studio: A Collection of Photographic Portraits of Living Artists, taken in the style of the Old Masters, by an Amateur, in 1864.

Related Material

Bibliography

Dafforne, James. “British Artists: Their Style and Character.” Art Journal (1869): 373.

The Fine Art Society 2014. Exhibition Catalogue. Edinburgh: Bourne Fine Art; London: The Fine Art Society, 2014. No. 14.

Marsh, Jan. ‘From slave Cabin to Windsor Castle: Josiah Henson and “Uncle Tom” in Britain.’ Nineteenth-Century Studies 16 (2002): 38.

Last modified 31 May 2014