News / Cleo Lake
New painting in Lord Mayor’s Parlour recognises a scientific immortal
When Bristol lord mayor Cleo Lake decided to remove the painting of Edward Colston from the Lord Mayor’s Chamber in City Hall, she didn’t realise that it would only be the first painting to be removed due to the questionable past of their protagonists.
On Monday morning, Lake’s first job of the working week was to supervise the hanging of a new painting to replace a 1760s portrait of Robert Nugent by acclaimed eighteenth-century artist Thomas Gainsborough.
Following the removal of the Colston painting, it was discovered that in his portrait, Nugent – who represented Bristol in the House of Commons from 1754 to 1774 – was holding in his hand the 1750 Act that dissolved the Royal African Company.
is needed now More than ever
The act transferred the company’s assets to the African Company of Merchants and was an important step in turning the transatlantic slave trade to one that took place on an industrial scale.
The oil painting of Robert Nugent by Thomas Gainsborough is believed to have hung in City Hall since it was built in 1956
“I do not think that such portraits should grace the walls of the office of the first citizen of a forward-looking, creative and diverse city like Bristol,” Lake said.
“They do not resonate anything positive to me personally and have no connection to who we are as a city today nor the vision for our future. They are dull and dated at best and I was not willing to preside and concur with the status quo of keeping them there nor miss the opportunity to usher in some change, however symbolic.”
With Gainsborough original now in the safe hands of Bristol’s museum service, it has been replaced with a painting by Bristol artist Helen Wilson-Roe.
The new painting is of Henrietta Lacks, a scientific phenomenon whose cells have become ‘immortal’ since her death in the USA in 1951.
Lacks’ cells are the source of the HeLa cell line, the first immortalised cell line and one of the most important cell lines in medical research.
Her cells – removed from a tumour during treatment for cervical cancer in Baltimore, Maryland – still reproduce indefinitely and are used by medical organisations across the world.
Bristol Lord Mayor Cleo Lake helps artist Helen Wilson-Roe hang her painting of Henrietta Lacks
The painting by Wilson-Roe, who has a full-time job in the NHS, is part of a project to paint portraits of every living relative of Lacks, which has already seen her travel to the USA to meet as many family members as possible.
She has painted ten so far out of 28, and it is her dream to invite the extended Lacks family to Bristol in order to see the paintings at City Hall.
“This is an amazing honour,” Wilson-Roe said after she hung the painting in the Lord Mayor’s Chamber with the help of Lake and a small stepladder.
“To have a Gainsborough taken down so one of my paintings can go up. That does not happen every day.
“I believe that history sometimes ignores people of significance. I paint people who should be painted. It’s good to have a woman of colour who is a hero to the black community. To have her here is such a huge achievement.”
Helen Wilson-Roe in the Lord Mayor’s Chamber after hanging her painting of Henrietta Lacks
Read more: Statue unveiled of Bristol lord mayor
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