The Garden Museum in London is leading an emergency campaign to raise £420,000 (€486,000) to acquire the portrait of John Ystumllyn, the first well-documented figure of African origin in North Wales. This painting is considered to be the oldest known portrait of a black gardener in British history. The work is currently in a private collection, managed by the dealer Anthony Mould, and has been on loan to the museum since 2023. Without sufficient funding, the painting could permanently leave the British institutional public domain.
The portrait depicts John Ystumllyn at the estimated age of around sixteen, dressed in an elegant blue suit and waistcoat, against a dark background. Its inscription on the back dates precisely from May 11, 1754. The attribution remains anonymous but the quality of execution indicates a gifted portraitist. This work stands out for its singularity. John Ystumllyn appears as himself, and not in the margins of an aristocratic portrait, as was generally the case for black figures in 18th-century British art. The strength of his presence breaks with an iconography that often reduced subjects of African descent to markers of colonial prestige.
The Garden Museum is applying simultaneously to three major public funding bodies: the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Art Fund, Art Council England and the Victoria & Albert Museum. If the fundraising fails, all private donations collected will be fully refunded to the donors.
Anonymous, Portrait of John Ystumllyn18th century.
© Prudence Cuming / Garden Museum
Alongside the campaign, the museum is carrying out a research project aimed at reconstructing the full biography of John Ystumllyn. This work aims in particular to clarify the precise geographical origins of the model and its legal status in 18th century Britain.
Probably a victim of the Atlantic slave trade, John Ystumllyn (born around 1736) was apparently kidnapped as a child in West Africa or the West Indies before being brought, around 1746, to the estate of Plas Ystumllyn, in Gwynedd, where the Wynn family gave him his name, ensured his education and had him baptized. A polyglot, he quickly learned Welsh and English. Becoming a noted artisan and gardener, he clandestinely married Margaret Gruffydd in 1768. This is believed to be the first recorded mixed marriage in Wales. First dismissed, he was then reinstated by the Wynn family, who offered him a cottage in Nanhyran. When he died in 1786, a text composed by the poet Dafydd Sion Siams was engraved on his tombstone, a sign of the esteem in which he was held by his Welsh contemporaries.
If the acquisition is successful, the 1754 portrait would be exhibited alongside the painting Portrait of a Black Gardener (c. 1905) by Harold Gilman, acquired by the Garden Museum in 2013 through the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Art Fund and the Royal Horticultural Society. Harold Gilman’s work represents a black man, in a heroic posture, contrasting with the racist conventions of the time. The museum thus envisages a dialogue between two works 150 years apart but united by their subject, creating a unique narrative space on the black presence in British horticultural history.
The Garden Museum is housed in the former deconsecrated church of St Mary-at-Lambeth, adjoining the archbishopric of Lambeth Palace on the south bank of the River Thames. Founded in 1977, it is the only museum in the world entirely dedicated to the history of gardens, their art and design.
