John Knox Ferguson, 
Scottish fl.1884-1894- 
Portrait of a young black man wearing an earring; 

John Knox Ferguson, 
Scottish fl.1884-1894- 

Portrait of a young black man wearing an earring; 

oil on canvas, signed and dated 'J. Knox-Ferguson 1884' (upper right), 50.8 x 39.6 cm. 

Provenance: 
Private Collection, UK. 

Note: 
In the present work, we see a portrait of a young black man with a delicate earring in their left ear, at three quarters pose to the viewer. The rich red garment, worn like a wrap, is adorned with panels of grey bearing white and gold oval shaped shield-like motifs. The inclusion of the motifs and the garment indicate an intention to affiliate the subject with a specific region of Africa or tribe. 

Knox Ferguson was born in Edinburgh, but made his career painting in England, in St Ives and mostly in and around Worcestershire, specifically Kidderminster. As such, it is likely that the subject was painted with a model, and is intended to be an imagining of a wealthy African dressed in fine traditional garments in the late 19th century, rather than the subject being a portrait of a specific person of note. Ferguson was active between 1884 and 1894. The Victoria & Albert Museum hold two works, a pencil sketch and print, by Ferguson, both suggestions for the Church of St Mary and All Saints in Kidderminster. However, Ferguson’s masterpiece is considered to be his 1885 painting 'The Last Interview', which sold at Christie’s New York in 2003 for $15,535. Further works have appeared in auctions and for sale online, including several paintings of rural scenes, still lifes and portraits of women. In Kidderminster, Ferguson produced a number of pencil sketches of the town, as well as paintings, for the carpet manufacturer Peter Adam, who seems to be the closest thing to a patron that can be identified. Therefore, it is possible that the painting was made for Peter Adam, or another patron in Kidderminster. 

Research into African textiles contained in online collections of major museums struggled to find any useful similarities to the sitter's dress. In the first instance, the deep red of the garment suggests it to be made of silk, which would be appropriate given the gold highlighting. Furthermore, Ferguson has captured well the iridescence of the gold, suggesting silk rather than gold cotton or other such material. Silk garments appear rarely in the African collections of major museums, and those that do appear were manufactured outside Africa, for example in India. The traditional textiles of Western Africa, where gold was available and used in traditional arts, are predominantly cotton covered entirely in geometric, repeating patterns. Examples include Kente cloth, from Ghana, and Yoruba cloth, from Nigeria. These traditional garments do not fit with the garment in the painting which looks as if it would have been a solid red central panel and the grey with the shield-motif being in bands at either end.

An examination of thousands of items in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Victoria & Albert Museum, Smithsonian, George Washington Museum, British Museum, and National Museum of Liverpool yielded no similar shield motifs to those in the painting. In fact, the grey panels with the motifs are somewhat messy in appearance and not of rigid geometric form that would be expected of a traditional African design. A leading expert in the field of African textiles suggested that the design was almost impressionist, making the garment difficult to evaluate. He further pointed out that in the 19th century many fabrics were designed and manufactured in England for the African market. The form of the motif may have been inspired by the artist’s or manufacturer’s ideas of African art and could be said to be close in form to Zulu shields, which would have been familiar to an English audience around this time. Given the lack of similarity to a specific artistic tradition, the idea that the textile was created in England, or imagined by the painter, supports the hypothesis that the subject is an imagining of traditional dress rather than a specific portrait of a named individual. We may even speculate that the fabric was produced by the carpet maker Peter Adam, Ferguson’s patron in Kidderminster. In light of the research above, the portrait may well have been produced for an English museum or gallery in the manner of global ethnographic portraits that were popular in the 19th century.