Temporary export bar for portrait of freed slave after 530,000 sale

Qatar's five-year deal with National Portrait Gallery means historic picture will return to UK after exhibition in Doha

The dignified, handsome face of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, the earliest known British portrait of a freed slave, will remain in London at least for the time being after an agreement between the National Portrait Gallery and the painting's owner in Qatar.

The Qatar Museums Authority paid 530,000 for the painting at a Christie's auction, but the government imposed a temporary export bar after the sale because the work, by William Hoare of Bath, was seen as having great historic importance to the UK.

It shows Diallo as a devout Muslim, holding his Qur'an, which he had written himself from memory in London, and was apparently made at the request of his English friends despite his religious misgivings over being portrayed.

The NPG managed to match the price and the Qataris have reached a five-year deal to lend the work to the London gallery instead of it being exported. The portrait will also be seen on a UK tour to Leicester, Liverpool and the north-east, and in 2013 will be the centrepiece of an exhibition in Doha, before returning to Britain.

Sandy Nairne, director of the NPG, said: "It is a portrait that sheds new light on cultural and intellectual exchanges in the first half of the 18th century."

Diallo, known in England as Job Ben Solomon, was born around 1701 into a wealthy and scholarly family of Muslim clerics in Senegambia, west Africa. He was highly educated and spoke several languages. However the former slave owner and trader was captured by a rival tribe, humiliated by having his beard shaved, and enslaved himself. He was rescued from a tobacco plantation in Maryland by Thomas Bluett, an English lawyer and missionary, and brought to England where he became a celebrity, meeting George II and the intellectuals of the 1730s, and translating Arabic documents and inscriptions for Sir Hans Sloane, whose collections would become the nucle! us of th e British Museum.

The NPG launched a campaign last summer to buy the picture, and raised the full amount with more than 100,000 in public subscriptions plus 330,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and 100,000 from the Art Fund charity. The donations and grants will now be returned.

Roger Mandle, the American-born director of the Qatar museums, said: "Working with the National Portrait Gallery will allow the cultural, historical and religious significance of this portrait to be fully researched. This material can then be shared on an international basis."

However, there will inevitably be more tricky discussions about the painting. Having dropped their bid to export the painting, Qatar museums cannot apply again for a licence within 10 years but the London museum would like to keep the picture permanently.


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