Portrait of Ignatius Sancho

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, Whitehall

This portrait depicts Ignatius Sancho (c.1729-1780) who is commemorated on a plaque on the Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) building in King Charles Street, Whitehall. Sancho, a former enslaved man, writer and composer, lived near and ran a grocery shop on the site of the FCDO building. 

The only known portrait of Sancho is a small portrait made in 1768 by Thomas Gainsborough (now in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa). It is this portrait that Labinjo has revisited for this work. The process of repainting and reimagining Sancho from Gainsborough’s portrait has involved a complex dialogue between the artist and her subject.

Labinjo says the process of painting him, ‘made him feel more human’. Her brushstrokes bring warmth, movement and vitality to his image. Experimenting with shade, colour and solidity, she discovers new possibilities in a face that had been fixed into a single portrait.

Labinjo’s large-scale paintings depict intimate scenes of historical and contemporary life, both real and imagined. They are often based on figures appearing in personal and archival imagery that includes family portraits, found photography and historical material.

Born in Dagenham, London, Joy Labinjo lives and works in London. She received a MFA at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford in 2022 and prior to that a BA in Fine Art from the University of Newcastle (2017), during which time she also studied at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held most recently at Chapter, Cardiff (2022); Hospital Rooms, London; The Breeder Gallery, Athens, Greece (both 2020) and the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (2019). Key public commissions have included work for the Becontree Estate Centenary in London and for Brixton Underground Station. Group exhibitions including her work have been held most recently at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge (2022); the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden, Marrakech, Morocco; Mirror, Plymouth (both 2021); Cafe Gallery Projects, London; and Bonington Gallery, Nottingham (both 2018). In 2017, Labinjo received the Woon Art Prize, jointly awarded and presented by Northumbria University and BALTIC. Her work has been collected by institutions including the Musée d’Art Contemporain Africain Al Maaden (MACAAL), Marrakesh; and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota.

People

Ignatius Sancho (c.1729 - 1780)

Places

Subjects

portrait, male portrait

Materials & Techniques

canvas, paint, oil paint, oil painting, oil stick

Artist

Joy Labinjo (1994 - )

Title

Portrait of Ignatius Sancho

Date

2022

Medium

oil paint, oil stick on canvas

Dimensions

height: 200.0 cm; width: 150.0 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Tiwani Contemporary, March 2022

Provenance

Tiwani Contemporary, London UK; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 28 March 2022

GAC number

19053