The Garden Museum in London has launched an urgent campaign to raise £420,000 (€486,000) to acquire the portrait of John Ystumllyn, an 18th-century Black gardener considered the earliest known portrait of a Black gardener in British history. The painting, dated May 11, 1754, is currently in a private collection managed by dealer Anthony Mould and has been on loan to the museum since 2023. Without sufficient funding, the work could leave the British public domain permanently. The museum is simultaneously applying to three major public funding bodies: the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Art Fund, Arts Council England, and the Victoria & Albert Museum.
This acquisition matters because the portrait is historically singular: it depicts John Ystumllyn as an individual in his own right, not as a marginal figure in an aristocrat's portrait, challenging the typical iconography of Black subjects in 18th-century British art. Ystumllyn, likely kidnapped as a child from West Africa or the Caribbean, became a renowned gardener and polyglot in Wales, and his marriage to Margaret Gruffydd is believed to be the first recorded interracial marriage in Wales. If acquired, the portrait will be displayed alongside Harold Gilman's "Portrait of a Black Gardener" (c. 1905), creating a unique narrative on Black presence in British horticultural history.