The Garden Museum, on the south bank of the River Thames in London, is appealing for funds to save the portrait of an 18th century gardener who was abducted from Africa and worked on a Welsh estate. 

The portrait of gardener and plantsman John Ystumllyn (1736-1786/88) is on loan at the museum, which now has an opportunity to add it permanently to its collection. 

John was abducted as a small child from west Africa. He ended up in north Wales, working on the Ystumllyn estate at Criccieth. He was reportedly a fine gardener and horticulturalist. John married in Dolgellau (losing his position on the estate for absconding) and was a well known local figure. He was buried, in Ynyscynhaearn, with an englyn (a traditional Welsh poem) by the bard Dafydd Sion Siams on his tombstone. 

When he was around 16, an unnamed artist painted this portrait of him. It is the earliest known portrait of a Black gardener in Britain. 

The museum says: "As the country’s only museum of garden history, here at the Garden Museum John Ystumllyn will sit alongside other stories of great gardeners through the centuries, and will become a key part of our display on Black gardening history."

The museum is approaching funding bodies for help with the purchase and has also launched a public appeal. 

Christopher Woodward, Garden Museum Director, said: “The Garden Museum celebrates the heroes and heroines of British gardening: John Tradescant and Gertude Jekyll, Humphry Repton and Russell Page, Beth Chatto and Joy Larkcom. John Ystumllyn should also be one of our heroes, and it would be a privilege to share his story, which began when he was taken from his family in west Africa and is captured in this tiny, precious portrait. We will all learn from John.”