James Stephanoff

James Stephanoff, Historical Painter in Watercolours to King William IV, never set foot in Ceylon. About 1820, working from a sketch sent to London by a Sinhalese juror, he executed The Supreme Court of Judicature in the Island of Ceylon, published as an aquatint by Rudolph Ackermann and dedicated to Chief Justice Sir Alexander Johnston. Its subject is the Colombo court where the first native jury in the British empire had sat since 1810, and where the abolition of domestic slavery was proclaimed in 1816. In Johnston’s hands, this picture of a courtroom the artist had never entered became an instrument in a constitutional contest over the independence of the judiciary.