Reference Number: L0015
Date: c.1826
Extent: 1 portrait
Materials: Oil on canvas
Size: 930 x 800 mm
Provenance: Presented to Lloyd’s in 1965 by Marryat’s great-granddaughter, Mrs Marie Marryat Milliken

Description: Joseph Marryat was Chairman of Lloyd’s 1811-24. He was a West Indian merchant, underwriter, ship owner and later a banker in Marryat, Kay, Price and Coleman, which he joined in 1819 and headed in the 1820s. He was a prominent member of the Society of West Indian Planters and Merchants and Agent for Trinidad (1807-1815) and then Grenada (1815-1824) as well as an Member of Parliament. He opposed both the abolition of the slave trade and slavery in parliament and through the writing of pamphlets and was an owner of plantations and enslaved people. This is a half length portrait of Marryat who was Chairman of Lloyd’s 1811 – 1824. Hayes was a portrait painter, especially of military and naval officers, who first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1814. Hayes possibly exhibited this portrait at the Royal Academy in 1826. Marryat’s likeness is said to be taken from a bust of Marryat by William Behnes, which was in Grenada, and it is likely that this was a posthumous portrait, possibly around 1826. The portrait is unsigned.

Notes: See UCL’s LBS: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146630485. For more information on Joseph Marryat see the Underwriting Souls Exhibition “Expertise in Enslavement”.