Hanging on a palace wall is a portrait of two young women – here’s why it’s so special

When Misan Sagay stumbled into the wrong room in Scone Palace, she encountered a painting which would change her life.

Two young women stared out of the frame at her. One was fair-skinned, the other Black. Misan, a medical student at the University of St Andrews, momentarily forgot about the party she was meant to be at just corridors away.

‘They were equals in that painting,’ Misan would later say. ‘I was struck, intrigued.’ 

Years later, she returned to Scone Palace to find the portrait had been moved to a more prominent room and the names ‘Dido and Elizabeth’ added below. 

Misan delved further into the fascinating history of Dido – an illegitimate, mixed-race woman who held her own in British aristocracy – and created a screenplay for the movie ‘Belle’, released in 2013, while working for the NHS.

The story of Dido had reached a new audience who were eager to find out more.

‘The old world meeting the new’

Visitors to Scone Palace in Scotland, of which there are 100,000 a year, walk in the footsteps of pagan leaders and Christian kings. It’s where the first Scottish Parliament was held and is the original home to the Stone of Destiny, an ancient block of red sandstone used to crown the likes of Macbeth and Robert the Bruce.

Viscount Stormont William Murray lives on the estate with his wife Charlotte Clune and their 14-month-old son. The aristocrat meets Metro on a crisp autumn day; with dog Filo at his feet.

After pleasantries are exchanged, he heads towards the Ambassador’s Room where the painting of Dido and her cousin Elizabeth can be found beside a canopied bed and antique table.

‘Elizabeth is wearing an old-school dress, one heavily corseted which wouldn’t have been commonly worn at the time this was painted – in the early 1770s,’ the Viscount, 35, tells Metro as he looks at the painting. ‘She’s holding a heavy book and in a fixed position. She represents the old world and Old England.

‘Whereas Dido’s dress is almost moving, she’s in a much more flowing position. She wears a turban with an ostrich feather and holds a bowl of fruit; it’s the new world she represents. With Elizabeth reaching out to Dido, you have the old world meeting the new.’

Who was Dido Belle?

Born in 1761, Dido was the daughter of Admiral Sir John Lindsay, a British Navy captain who sailed in the Caribbean, and an African slave named Maria Belle.

Young Dido was sent to London to live with Sir John’s uncle, the 1st Earl of Mansfield, and his wife Elizabeth Finch. Meanwhile Maria was sent to America, where she lived in a Florida home paid for by Captain Lindsay. Why the mother and daughter were separated, historians still aren’t sure.

When Dido arrived at Kenwood House she captured the attention of young Elizabeth Murray. One year older than Dido, Elizabeth’s mother had died during a second childbirth and her diplomat father David Murray turned to his ‘incredibly generous’ uncle and aunt to take his young daughter.

Cousins Dido and Elizabeth became firm friends, sleeping in the same room and playing on the grounds of Kenwood House together. 

As an adult, Dido became the 1st Earl of Mansfield’s private secretary and was tasked with writing letters to senior members of Britain’s establishment.

‘It wasn’t Elizabeth who was doing that, it was Dido,’ the Viscount explains.

‘It was also Dido who was given the keys to the dairy by her aunt. That might sound a bit weird, but this was a period where posh women bred cows and got incredibly competitive about it. You’d have the Countess of Mansfield going up against the Countess of Coventry and it would all be very important. Dido was the one trusted with these incredibly important tasks.’ 

There was one key difference between Dido and Elizabeth however. During meals from ‘important’ visitors, Dido – presumably due to society’s outdated view on Black people and those born out of wedlock – was not permitted to sit at dinner and could only join after a meal was served.

There is one historic account from this occasion by Thomas Hutchinson, a colonial governor of Massachusetts, during a visit to London.

‘August 29, 1779: Dined at Lord and Lady Mansfield’s,’ Hutchinson wrote in his diary. ‘A Black came in after dinner and sat with the ladies, and after coffee, walked with the company in the gardens, one of the young ladies having her arm within the other… He [the 1st Earl] calls her Dido, which I suppose is all the name she has. He knows he has been reproached for showing a fondness for her – I dare say not criminal.’

Dido, the 1st Earl and slavery

Dido lived at a time when England’s economic power was fuelled by slave labour in the Caribbean and British colonies. But the tides were changing as people came to realise how abhorrent the practice was.

From 1756 to 1788, her great-uncle the 1st Earl was Lord Chief Justice, the most powerful judge in the country.

In 1772, he sided with slave James Somerset who had sought freedom after he was brought to England. The 1st Earl told the court the slave trade was ‘so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it’. 

Next came the Zong massacre, a tragedy which saw 130 African slaves thrown overboard when supplies ran out on a ship sailing to Jamaica. Owners of the merchant ship tried to claim insurance as they saw the slaves as ‘cargo’ rather than human beings.

In August 1781, when the case reached the 1st Earl, he sided with the insurers who had refused to pay and found the crew of the Zong guilty of the massacre.

‘This second case added huge momentum to [politicians] Lord Grenvile and William Wilberforce in their battle to end slavery throughout the British Empire,’ says the Viscount.

‘All this happened with Dido living under the 1st Earl’s roof.’

Later life for Dido

When Dido’s father, John Lindsay, died in 1788, an obituary carried by the London Chronicle newspaper praised Dido for her ‘amiable disposition and accomplishments have earned her the highest respect from all his Lordship’s relations and visitants’.

Meanwhile, the 1st Earl died in 1793, aged 88. He confirmed in his will that Dido was a free woman and left her £500 [approximately £40,000 in today’s money, but notably less than he left Elizabeth].

Dido went on to marry French-born John Davinier with whom she had three sons; Charles, John and William. The family lived at 14 Ranelagh Street North in Pimlico, London until Dido’s death in 1804 at the age of 43. No reason for her death was recorded. Dido has no surviving descendants; her family tree came to an end in 1975 when Harold Charles died in Johannesburg in 1975 – ironically during the apartheid years. 

While Dido’s own direct bloodline ended, the Viscount hopes long-lost relatives from her mother, Maria Bell, could exist somewhere in America.

He adds: ‘There’s a small project on the back-burner about that, to find out more about the descendants she may have. You never know, we might have some cousins in Florida we don’t know about.’

The Viscount speaks softly, as to not disturb the steady stream of visitors popping in to see the painting. Some barrel straight towards the painting, aware of its importance, while others curiously take a laminated information sheet and read, for the first time, the remarkable story of Dido.

The portrait was originally believed to have been the work of German painter Johann Zoffany. That was until 2018, when the BBC’s Fake or Fortune television show discovered it to be by David Martin, a pupil of Scottish artist Alan Ramsay.

A new chapter for Dido

Mikéla Henry-Lowe is used to painting inspiring women. Her current series, on Black powerlifters, features the likes of athletes Nayomi Pennant and Naomi James. When the 30-year-old was asked by English Heritage to take part in the ‘Painting Our Past: The African Diaspora in England’ project, Mikéla jumped at the opportunity.

In a strange twist of fate, she had actually walked in the footsteps of Dido. Mikéla used to work in events and was based at Kenwood House for several weddings and parties. She knew the exact rooms and corridors where Dido lived and breathed.

Mikéla, originally from Jamaica, tells Metro: ‘Dido is such an important figure, but her story can be lost in British history. I knew I wanted to be part of this project. I wanted to celebrate this Black History and the context behind the painting.’

The Covid pandemic hit shortly after Mikéla was commissioned by English Heritage, meaning her painting of Dido was created in the corner of her bedroom in her London flat. She chose to dress her Dido in a headwrap and an emerald green dress and place her against a bright and regal coral-coloured background.

Mikéla, who studied at Central Saint Martins arts college in London, explains: ‘In the original painting, Dido is with Elizabeth, and is actually set behind her. I wanted Dido to be the focal point, as if to say “look at me, I exist in this space where somebody that looks like me wouldn’t normally be.”

‘I worked a lot with the Belle movie and the main actor’s face, then tweaked my sketchings as much as I could based on historic descriptions of Dido I found during my research. I did the background first and worked my way forward, the finishing touches were things like where the light hit her face or the light in her face.

‘For the colour of her dress, deep green or emerald always looks good on brown skin, it’s just a given. This was also my first time painting lace, which was a challenge. I used something called a maulstick which lets you lean on the painting but not damage it, and that lets me have really steady hands.

‘The background on the painting is a coral colour, I thought it was a really harmonious with the green of her dress.’

Mikéla’s painting currently hangs in the library of Kenwood House, a room Dido spent countless hours in doing work for the 1st Earl.

‘It was nice to see Dido out and in her space, where she spent so much time,’ Mikéla adds. ‘My name is actually on the stand at Kenwood next to her. Someone I train with at the gym once texted me to be like ‘I just saw your name at Kenwood House!’

‘I still remember going to see the painting with my mum just after Covid, when we all had to wear masks. Watching so many people look at my painting, it was quite surreal. Painting Dido was a really big experience for me, it’s really nice to reflect back on it.’

More history to be uncovered 

Even today, the original painting of Dido still throws up one major question for art historians. The young woman has an expression quite unlike her cousin Elizabeth; Dido smiles at the viewer, her eyes sparkling with one finger pointed at her face. What did David Martin have in mind when he painted this particular expression?

At Scone Palace, the Viscount muses: ‘Some have suggested Dido is literally pointing at her colour of skin and going “hey, check it out” but other people suggest that’s too blatant a reading. There’s a pointing gesture in the Hindi faith which is said to be similar. Her expression is still hard for us to interpret.’

And historians are still working to discover more elements from Dido’s past – such as details from her later life with her husband and two sons.

As well as the film Belle, her story has been retold in children’s book series ‘The Lizzie and Belle Mysteries’, which sees Dido investigate a secret in Georgian London.

‘Dido’s story makes me feel immensely proud,’ the Viscount adds.

‘This portrait is one of the earliest pieces of Western art where a white and Black person are clearly depicted as equals, which makes it very special. And in terms of the 1st Earl of Mansfield, those are some very big shoes to fill. 

‘We know so much about Dido’s story, yet there’s still elements of mystery left to discover. In old places like this [Scone Palace] you could often think it’s the “same old stories where nothing changes.” But there’s still so much we can learn about, and from, Dido.’

Find out more about Mikéla’s artwork here or about Scone Palace here

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Kirsten.Robertson@metro.co.uk 

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