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early 17th century (made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

crystal and cast and chased brass, signed 'N.R.' for Nicolaus Rugendas

Object details

Categories
Object type
Materials and techniques
crystal and cast and chased brass
Brief description
crystal and cast and chased brass, signed 'N.R.' for Nicolaus Rugendas, probably Augsburg, early 17th century
Physical description
crystal and cast and chased brass, signed 'N.R.' for Nicolaus Rugendas
Dimensions
  • Height: 8.2cm
  • Width: 4cm
  • Depth: 2cm
Object history
Purchased at the auction by Christie's of the collection of Ralph Bernal (1783-1854), politician and art collector, in 1855. He held a seat in the House of Commons from 1815-52. After his death the Society of Arts proposed without success that the Government should buy his entire collection for the Museum of Ornamental Art then at Marlborough House which became the future South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria and Albert Museum. 730 lots were acquired for Marlborough House (Anthony Burton, Vision & Accident, V&A Publications, 1999, p. 34).

After his father's death in 1811, Bernal inherited three large sugar estates and over 500 enslaved people in Jamaica. 'In 1835 and 1836 he was awarded compensation for slave ownership amounting to over £11,450' (Helen Davies, Ralph Bernal, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, version dated 11 March 2021).

Provenance

Ralph Bernal (1783-1854) was a renowned collector and objects from his collection are now in museums across the world, including the V&A. He was born into a Sephardic Jewish family of Spanish descent, but was baptised into the Christian religion at the age of 22. Bernal studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, and subsequently became a prominent Whig politician. He built a reputation for himself as a man of taste and culture through the collection he amassed and later in life he became the president of the British Archaeological Society. Yet the main source of income which enabled him to do this was the profits from enslaved labour.

In 1811, Bernal inherited three sugar plantations in Jamaica, where over 500 people were eventually enslaved. Almost immediately, he began collecting works of art and antiquities. After the emancipation of those enslaved in the British Caribbean in the 1830s, made possible in part by acts of their own resistance, Bernal was awarded compensation of more than £11,450 (equivalent to over £1.5 million today). This was for the loss of 564 people enslaved on Bernal's estates who were classed by the British government as his 'property'. They included people like Antora, and her son Edward, who in August 1834 was around five years old (The National Archives, T 71/49). Receiving the money appears to have led to an escalation of Bernal's collecting.

When Bernal died in 1855, he was celebrated for 'the perfection of his taste, as well as the extent of his knowledge' (Christie and Manson, 1855). His collection was dispersed in a major auction during which the Museum of Ornamental Art at Marlborough House, which later became the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A), was the biggest single buyer.
Association
Bibliographic references
  • Christie and Manson, Catalogue of the Celebrated Collection of Works of Art, from the Byzantine Period to that of Louis Seize, of that Distinguished Collector, Ralph Bernal (London, 1855)
  • The National Archives of the UK (TNA): Slave Registers: Jamaica: St. Ann. (1) Indexed, 1832, T 71/49
  • Hannah Young, ''The perfection of his taste': Ralph Bernal, collecting and slave-ownership in 19th-century Britain', Cultural and Social History, 19:1 (2022), pp. 19-37
Collection
Accession number
2356-1855

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Record createdJune 8, 2005
Record URL
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