The actor David Harewood has described his new portrait at Harewood House as a powerful example of his ancestor’s resilience and the enduring legacy of descendants of enslaved people.
Harewood House in Leeds, West Yorkshire, this week unveiled a portrait of the actor and author as part of its Missing Portraits series, which was launched in 2022 to redress the balance of artwork in its collection by depicting people of African-Caribbean heritage who have connections to the country house and its owners, the Lascelles family.
This portrait, by the Leeds-based photographer and film-maker Ashley Karrell, is accompanied by an exhibition exploring Harewood’s life and celebrating achievements in his career, including his role as an ambassador for mental health awareness and racial equality.
The actor is descended from people who were enslaved in the 18th century on a Caribbean sugar plantation owned by the second Earl of Harewood, Henry Lascelles.
Harewood said the portrait was an important recognition of the forced labour of the enslaved people on Harewood’s plantation, which helped produce the money to build the estate and the family’s wealth.
“It stands as a fine example of the resilience of my people; that not only did we endure and survive, but we have also managed to thrive. The portrait is a sort of topping on that seal, that enduring legacy, that enduring strength shines through even today,” he said.
The portrait is supported by David Lascelles, the eighth Earl of Harewood, and his wife, Diane Howse. The actor and the earl first met in 2021 in a documentary that explored their historical roots to the house and transatlantic slavery.
“I really think that positive engagement and constructive engagement is our only way forward. I don’t think anger and division gets us anywhere,” Harewood said.
When he first planned to meet Lascelles in 2021, shortly after the murder of George Floyd and the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement, he remembered feeling angry.
“But I was really surprised with who he is and how he has presented himself and sort of was disarmed,” Harewood said of Lascelles. “It was David’s strength of character and the fact of his openness that he’s been willing to engage with this very difficult conversation.”
Lascelles said the people who refuse to engage need to feel uncomfortable with that decision. “David’s family and my family, at this point in history so long ago, intersected in a very weird and nasty way … But because of that history, here we both are today in 2023. So what happened then there’s nothing we can do to change that, but we can engage with that legacy, as David said, to try to make something happen today.”
The exhibition will open on Friday and run until 22 October at Harewood House, which receives just under 300,000 visitors every year.
“If half of those people or even one of them stops at the portrait and asks ‘why is that here?’ and engages with it, and asks one of the volunteers about it – ‘what’s that picture doing there?’ – and starts to understand the connection, I think it’s a positive.
“You wouldn’t be able to fail to notice it because there are so few pictures of black people there, so to have such a striking image beautifully shot by Ashley Karrell, we are making progress,” Harewood said.
Karrell was also commissioned to create the first portrait of the series, featuring Arthur France MBE, the founder of the Leeds carnival.
“None of this is easy for me, but all of these things expose the reality of the [slave] trade, the reality of plantation life,” Harewood said.
Lascelles likened the denialism and derision of academics and campaigners raising awareness about transatlantic slavery to those who tried to raise the alarm about climate change 25 years ago.
Harewood added: “There seems to be a global tussle between those who want to be progressive on a whole range of issues, climate and race, and those who want to slam the door and not want change.”
Additional reporting by Akua Reeves
