Slave traffic RMG PX9696 - Drawing. Public domain image.

Slave traffic

This painting refers to the story of Inkle and Yarico, first published in 1711. In the story, the ‘native’ woman, Yarico, rescues an Englishman Mr Inkle after a shipwreck. They fall in love and live together in the woods, before a passing ship brings them to Barbados. The picture shows Inkle at the moment that he sells Yarico into slavery. She has just told him that she is pregnant with his child, in the hope that this will make him change his mind. Inkle asks the trader for more money instead. Sentimental stories like this often exposed the cruelties of slavery, and they were used in the growing art and literature of the abolition movement. It is signed by the artist and dated.

Slave traffic