This figure is of Lord Chatham (1708-78) who was raised to the Peerage and became Lord Keeper in 1766, as described on the inscription below. In the same year he declared himself in favour of a conciliatory policy towards the American colonies. America is represented here as a black woman who kneels, in gratitude, at Chatham’s feet.

The convention for depicting the Four Continents as female figures was used as early as the Counter-Reformation to symbolise the worldwide spread of Catholic Christendom. The figures were given wider appeal through their inclusion in the Iconologia of Cesare Ripa, an illustrated book of emblems widely used by artists from the early 17th century.

Within the convention, ‘America’ was depicted as an olive-skinned indigenous woman wearing ‘a Veil folded over her Shoulder; round her Body, an artificial Ornament of Feathers of divers Colours; in one Hand a Bow, and a Quiver by her Side; under one Foot a human Head pierc’d with an Arrow, and a Lizard on the Ground.’ Here, however, she appears as an African woman. This may be in allusion to the spread of slavery within the region, or may reflect indiference to, or conflation of, racial differences (at the Meissen porcelain factory, for example, America was often represented by a black-skinned man or woman wearing a feathered headdress).