A half-length portrait of Captain Philip Beaver, 1766–1813, in captain’s (over three years) full-dress uniform, 1795–1812 pattern. His coat is buttoned up across his chest and he wears a black stock. Facing slightly to left, he has short dark hair and blue-grey eyes. A telescope is tucked under his right arm. Behind him is a sky filled with dark clouds. There is a view of the sea in the right-hand corner of the painting. A pale shape, probably intended for a ship, has been loosely sketched on the horizon.

The sitter was the son of an Oxfordshire clergyman. He entered the Royal Navy at the age of eleven in October 1777, serving initially in the Channel, then later in the West Indies, where he was promoted to lieutenant at the end of the American War in 1783. In the peace that followed, Beaver was placed on half-pay and spent much of the next decade living with his mother in France, save for a few months in 1790 and 1791 when he was briefly recalled to the navy.

In 1792, he became involved in an ill-fated attempt to establish a colony on the West African island of Bolama (now part of Guinea-Bissau). Beaver was a member of the colony’s founding committee, which met in Old Slaughter’s Coffee House in London. United in their opposition to what Beaver called the “inhumanity” of the slave trade, the committee planned the Bolama colony to advance the abolitionist cause. They intended to grow the same tropical produce as slave plantations in the West Indies – sugar, cotton, and coffee, for example – but, rather than using enslaved people as labourers, they would employ free African workers and pay them for their efforts. This experiment was supposed to demonstrate that it was possible to produce valuable cash crops for the British market without resorting to the enslavement and forced transportation of African people. The Bolama venture followed a strand of argument, widely accepted in abolitionist circles at the time, that “legitimate commerce” in Africa should replace the transatlantic slave trade. Several anti-slavery activists advocated settlement as a means to achieve this goal. It can be argued that such thinking, while well-intentioned, directly contributed to the large-scale colonisation of the African continent by Britain and other European powers in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, although anti-slavery in their object, the Bolama committee were influenced by the derogatory idea, prevalent throughout Europe in this period, that African communities lacked any meaningful culture of their own. Hence they argued that, as well as generating prosperity for their African workers, their scheme would also affect cultural ‘improvement’ by introducing Christianity and providing education. The Bolama project thus reflected both the ideals and the flaws of the abolitionist movement, which was not wholly removed for the racist and exploitative ideologies of its time.

A group of 275 settlers, including men, women and children, departed for Bolama on 11 April 1792 and arrived on the island two months later. Things began to go wrong almost immediately and over half the colonists either left or died within the first few months. Beaver took over the management of the colony following the departure of the governing council and, by the end of the first year, he was one of only five remaining settlers on the island. A number of factors underlay the settlement’s failure, including inclement weather, disease, and insufficient supplies. Beaver heroically persevered in trying to make the project succeed, suffering through several bouts of illness and teaching himself many new skills, including carpentry, rope-making and house-building. He only abandoned his efforts when he heard that war had broken out between Britain and Revolutionary France, knowing that the conflict would produce insurmountable challenges for the struggling colony.

On his return from Africa, Beaver found employment in the Royal Navy. As first lieutenant in the ‘Stately’, he assisted in capturing the Cape of Good Hope and Ceylon in 1795. In the process, he caught the attention of Sir George Elphinstone, later Lord Keith, who became his patron. Beaver served under Keith on the Mediterranean station, making commander in 1799 and marrying his fiancée, Maria Teresa Elliott, at Gibraltar the following year. Promoted post-captain in February 1801, he took command of Keith’s flagship, the ‘Foudroyant’, before transferring to the ‘Déterminée’. In this ship, he was sent to liaise with the Ottoman court at Constantinople, where the sultan presented him with the Turkish order of the Crescent in recognition of his services.

After the ‘Déterminée’ was paid off at Portsmouth in May 1802, Beaver settled down for several years on shore, taking command of the Essex sea fencibles between 1803 and 1806. This prolonged period ashore gave Beaver the opportunity to reflect on his experiences in Bolama and he wrote up his island journals for publication. Published in 1805, Beaver’s ‘African Memoranda’ does not dwell on the failure of the project and instead promotes the abolitionist principles upon which it was founded. The text was read and admired by other abolitionists, including the poet Robert Southey, who wrote in 1809 that he had been “much delighted with the ‘African Memoranda’”.

This portrait was painted around the time that the ‘African Memoranda’ was published. The artist, John Opie, was involved in abolitionist circles through his second wife, the poet and novelist Amelia Opie (née Alderson), who prominently campaigned for the end of the slave trade. Although to date no direct connections have been found between Beaver and Amelia Opie, it seems likely that they would have been aware of each other through the abolitionist movement. It was possibly because of Amelia’s influence that Beaver chose her husband as his portraitist. As such, the portrait is a fascinating product of the social networks around the abolitionist cause.

John Opie was an important figure in eighteenth-century British art, who eventually became Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy. Although he derided fellow artist William Beechey’s pictures as being ‘of that mediocre quality as to taste & fashion, that they seemed only fit for sea Captains & merchants’, Opie painted a number of naval men himself and took a keen interest in the artistic representation of Britain’s maritime activities. In 1800, he proposed a pantheon to Britain’s maritime prowess to consist of sea pieces, portraits, and allegories surrounding a central figure of Neptune paying homage to Britannia – something of an imaginary predecessor to the Naval Gallery established a quarter-century later in the Painted Hall at Greenwich Hospital.

Opie painted two versions of the present portrait, one of which remained unfinished in his studio at the time of his death in April 1807. The sitter’s family acquired both versions of the painting. The present portrait descended through the family line until it was consigned to auction and purchased by the museum. The only discernible difference between two versions of the portrait is that this one shows Beaver without the gold medal he received from the Turkish Sultan, which is pinned to his chest in the other painting.

Beaver reflected in the introduction to his ‘African Memoranda’ that, at the time of writing, he had “just then, for the first time in my life, sat down quietly in a house of my own” after years of living on naval ships and overseas. His decision to sit for a portrait at this time may have been influenced by his new domestic circumstances, since family portraits were an important feature of a respectable middle or upper class home.

Beaver may also have acquired the portrait in the knowledge that he might soon be sent to sea again, in which case the painting would provide comfort to his wife and children during his absence. In 1806, he was appointed to command the ‘Acasta’ and sailed for the West Indies, where he took part in the reduction of Martinique in 1809. After briefly returning home, he was placed in command of the ‘Nisus’ and ordered to the East Indies, where he participated in the capture of Mauritius and Java and served for a year on the coast on Madagascar. Having been ordered back to England, the ‘Nisus’ put into Table Bay in late March 1813. There, Beaver was seized with a violent inflammation of the bowels and died on 5 April.

His sudden death, coupled with the bankruptcy of his agent, left his widow Maria Teresa and their six children in precarious financial circumstances. Maria Teresa found employment as a matron of Greenwich Hospital School, a role she held for more than thirty years. Greenwich Pensioners used to visit her and her children to share their memories of serving with her husband. Given that the National Maritime Museum is housed in the old school buildings, it is fitting that Beaver’s portrait should now form part of the museum collection. The museum archive also holds some of Beaver’s naval papers (RUSI/NM/180); the collection consists of eleven volumes of logs, providing complete coverage of Beaver’s career at sea between 1795 and his death in 1813.