Granville Sharp

Granville Sharp (1735-1813) was instrumental in the growing movement for the abolition of slavery in the later eighteenth century. As a clerk in the Ordnance Office of the Tower of London he spent a large amount of time campaigning against social injustice, especially the slave trade. In 1769 he published ‘A Representation of the Injustice and Dangerous Tendency of Tolerating Slavery’, the first tract to articulate opposition to slavery. From 1787 Sharp was very active in 'The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the slave trade’. He had become involved due to his encounter with a slave Jonathan Strong whom he succeeded in classifying as a freeman after he was thrown out by his master despite attempts to bring him back to slavery. Sharp was also one of the founders of Sierra Leone.

George Dance (1741-1825) was an eminent architect, designing Newgate Prison for example. He also created over two hundred drawings of his friends and contemporaries whom he sketched from life between 1793-1810 many of which were engraved by William Daniell. This soft ground etching shows the artist at he height of his career and was described as exhibiting a ‘remarkable likeness to the sitter..'