The Captured Runaway depicts a mixed-race African-descended enslaved woman handcuffed to a bounty hunter, pausing on their journey south to be reunited with her owner. This painting demonstrates the period’s intense interest in the abolitionist movement, propelled in part by works of both American and European authors. One such work was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), written in Brunswick, Maine, in response the recently enacted Fugitive Slave Act. Stowe’s novel centers on Uncle Tom, an older enslaved man, and his acquaintances, including Eliza, a mulatto woman who escapes the horrors of slavery. While The Captured Runaway does not illustrate a particular scene from the novel, Gale probably hoped it would resonate with admirers of Stowe’s story. London-born, Gale found success early, exhibiting regularly at the Royal Academy of Arts.
Object Description
William Gale was born in London, where he probably trained, and where, from 1844 to 1893, he exhibited over 100 works of art at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibitions, including The Captured Runaway in 1856. In 1851, he married and travelled to Italy for his honeymoon and, like many of his contemporaries, he ventured to the Middle East and the Holy Land, deriving rich subject matter from these experiences. He was a prolific artist; his output included biblical and mythological subjects, portraits and Orientalist pictures.
Gale’s Captured Runaway shows a mixed-race African-descended female slave handcuffed to a bounty hunter, pausing on their journey south, to her owner. The Victorians were at once horrified and politically engaged by real and fictionalised stories of fugitive slaves bravely attempting freedom, and Gale would have achieved maximum effect with his light-complexioned slave (often referred to as a ‘quadroon’). His female character wears the standard striped cotton dress and red turban in which slaves were often illustrated. She sits on a U.S. Mail sack, with a piece of nibbled bread on the floor next to her, suggesting that she is less concerned with earthly matters. Her beseeching eyes look upward, perhaps delivering a subtle Christian message, similar to that in abolitionist fiction, and mirroring the evangelical tone sometimes associated with the anti-slavery movement.
Her slave catcher wears a raccoon coat and hat, placing the scene in the northeast, and on the table rests his open hunting knife, a plug of tobacco, an empty glass and a bottle, an open compass and the unfurled reward poster. The Native American moccasins of northeastern origin hanging on the wall offer a colourful intervention in the shadowy scene. To the right, hangs the slave catcher’s rifle and gunpowder horn, emphasising the hunt of his human prey. All of these accoutrements so carefully documented by Gale indicate that the slave catcher travelled north and is here depicted during the long return journey south with his valuable bounty. His trusted bloodhound rests on the floor under the table but, instead of being a symbol of kind fidelity as is so often the case with dogs in Victorian genre paintings, here the animal is transmuted into an emblem of the chase. Gale has gone to great lengths to set the dramatic scene, highlighting the hopeless plight of this courageous captured slave, but with the suggestion that escape could again be possible, the slumbering slave catcher and his knife within her reach. The rough lumber wall, stuffed with hay for insulation, points to the artist’s overall careful attention to accuracy and detail. The light in the cabin focuses the viewer’s attention on the face of the girl, and renders the profile of the slave catcher in a monstrous amorphous shadow on the wall.
The Captured Runaway demonstrates the intense Victorian interest in the contemporary abolitionist movement. The Compromise of 1850 appeased the South at the expense of the North, to prevent conflict between the two factions. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 dictated that runaway slaves could be extradited to the South and that northerners were required by law to take a role in the vigilance. The abolitionist movement was spurred on by the Fugitive Slave Act, nick-named the ‘Bloodhound Law,’ which required the return of all runaway slaves in the North to their southern masters. Largely seen as a measure taken by the northern states to pacify their opponents, the law strengthened the power and authority of slave owners. To facilitate the capture of runaways, bounty hunters flooded the North, hoping to earn the standard 5% commission for every slave returned to his or her owner. Whereas before 1850, states could determine their own laws concerning the official assistance of slave catchers, the new law of 1850 mandated that a fine be levied against any Federal Marshall or other official if they did not arrest an alleged runaway slave, and that anyone assisting a runaway could be arrested, fined and imprisoned.
Abolitionist writings from the United States and Europe had an important impact on artists and writers. Uncle Tom’s Cabin of 1852 by Harriet Beecher Stowe, which had been inspired by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, won immediate popularity throughout Europe. Stowe’s novel centres on Uncle Tom, an older slave, and his many acquaintances, moralising against the enslavement of human beings. While The Captured Runaway does not illustrate a particular scene from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Gale probably hoped for his painting to resonate with admirers of Stowe’s story, highlighting the travails of Eliza, the mulatto slave character who escapes the horrors of slavery.
The British public felt a strong affinity for the plight of African American slaves, celebrating the successful escape of many runaways to British Canada, including Stowe’s own George and Eliza, where British laws protected the freedom of fugitives, as slavery had been made illegal in the British Empire in 1834.
In the mid 19th century, courageous escaped slaves could gain their freedom assisted by a system known as the Underground Railroad, whereby individuals and groups of fugitives were passed from one safe house to another, and which was operated and aided by anti-slavery proponents to transport men and women northwards to Canada. Possibly as many as 100,000 escaped slaves made this journey to freedom via the ‘Railroad’, with activities much accelerated as a result of the Fugitive Slave Act.
Britain abolished slavery in 1833, the anti-slavery movement having begun in the late 18th century. Painting was deployed as a political statement opposed to American slavery and its international economic impact. Only a small number of pictures at the Royal Academy featured African-born or African-descended subjects. Few artists were willing to present such controversial subject matter. Gale’s The Captured Runaway and other abolitionist art represent the material world of the slave trade. With such images, the commercial aspect of slavery was laid bare, the trade in human lives. It was difficult to exhibit such work in America; American artists rarely portrayed slavery before the Civil War. One of the earliest images illustrating slaves is the ‘Brookes’ slave ship diagram, which was widely disseminated by the late 1780s but depicted slaves anonymously. Artists like Gale conveyed slaves as people, with emotions and families and hardships. Even by the mid 19th century, the public was more accustomed to the images illustrating the theatre of the slave auction, not depictions of the individualised travails of runaway or captured slaves in their break for freedom, which were powerful resistance images. Pictures helped people to understand the anti-slavery movement by making an abstract concept very powerful and personal. As with any campaign, images help to move a conversation in ways that can be transformative. It was in this way that the Uncle Tom narrative had enormous impact. Illustrated fiction helped to spread the abolitionist sentiment. The novel did more than anything else to spread anti-slavery awareness. Fleeing slavery was a singular act of resistance and demonstrated black women and men taking fate into their own hands. But running away was also incredibly difficult to accomplish. The challenges of leaving family behind, remaining undetected, finding food and making one’s way to freedom meant that many escaped slaves did not succeed.
Even though William Gale’s image is not based on an eyewitness account, it nonetheless stands in direct opposition to slavery and to the endorsed federal powers to pursue escaped slaves following the 1850 Act. There were very few abolitionist artists, as most veered away from such political tropes. The few surviving examples of abolitionist art represent the visual culture of the anti-slavery movement and illustrate the trauma and exploitation associated with the slave trade. These were the stories of strength and courage connected to so many of the characters who sought freedom and radical change. White and black abolitionists on both sides of the Atlantic mobilised those experiences and the power of narrative to bring about an end to slavery.
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(1) One such advertisement from 1837 reads: ‘$500 Reward. Ranaway from the subscriber, the quadroon girl, Elizabeth; sixteen years old; very bright color; has a handsome head of hair, and is very likely.’ Isaac F. Wood, Laurel Hill, La., March 20, 1837. (Lydia Maria Child, The Patriarchal Institution, 1860.). Similar posters were illustrated in publications by the anti-slavery and women’s rights activist Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880), such as Fact and Fiction of 1846 and The Patriarchal Institution, 1860
