This is a print from Biard's oil painting, exhibited first at Berlin in 1835 and then at the Royal Academy, London, in 1840 as 'The Slave Trade'. It was given to Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, whose widow presented it to Wilberforce House, Hull, where it now bears the title 'The Slave Trade (Slaves on the West Coast of Africa)'. Its appearance at the RA was in the same year that Turner showed 'The slave ship, slavers throwing overboard the dead and dying, typhoon coming on' (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA). The colouring and the addition of tinfoil sequins and similar decoration on this print is more usually seen on cheaper 'penny-plain, tuppence-coloured' theatrical and similar ones and is likely to have been done as a Victorian domestic pastime rather than professionally before sale. Biard (1799-1882) was a French genre painter who supported the Abolitionist cause. See ZBA2509, ZBA2729 for other copies and ZBA2761 for another version.