At the auction in 2024 the sitter was said to be ‘attaché at the Chinese Embassy’. As improbable as this sounded, it was to prove a vital lead in recovering Butler’s biography. Warren had shown a painting at the Royal Academy in 1886 entitled ‘The Marquis Tseng, Chinese Minister, awaiting officials on New Year’s Day, a custom in China’ (no.205). This made a direct connection between the artist of our drawing and Chinese diplomats. Marquis Zeng Jize (Tseng Chi-tse) was the Qing minister in Europe from 1878 until 1886. Sure enough, multiple sources list George A. Butler as Zeng’s ‘secretary’. In 1887, the year Warren shows his portrait, The London and China Telegraph reported from Peking (Beijing) the arrival of Zeng’s wife and children ‘at the new house built for their reception. Mr George A. Butler, confidential secretary to the Marquis during the latter part of his stay in Europe, has resumed his duties.’[3] The question remained as to Butler’s nationality and how he got to China.The English language papers printed in China and Hong Kong enable the reconstruction of further aspects of Butler’s life and career. In February 1877 the London and China Telegraph announced the marriage of George Augustus Butler ‘son of the Rev. Henry H. Butler of Washington City to Annie, second daughter of the late David Walker of London.’ Butler was therefore American by birth, the son of the Reverend Henry H. Butler, founding minister of the Second Baptist Church of Washington.[4] The Butlers’ marriage certificate shows that the wedding took place in the Anglican cathedral in Shanghai and that the United States Consul General, John C. Myers (1823-1890), was their witness. It further shows that Butler was listed as Superintendent of the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company.

This was a position Butler had occupied since at least 1863.[5] Operated by the American tradition house, Russell & Co, the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company had been formed in 1862. They began operating with five steamships which eventually expanded to 18 by the 1870s. During Butler’s tenure the company would average 12% profit, with their best year seeing a 50% return. With $1.35milion in initial capital, the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company became the largest joint-stock company in China. Butler led a plan to purchase rival steamships that were operating on the Yangtze River, from 1867 the company would hold a monopoly on the river and two coastal routes, Shanghai and Ningbo and Shanghai and Tianjin. Butler appears throughout the commercial and private correspondence of European traders in this period, invariably described as ‘Black Butler’.[6] Butler makes an appearance in a number of contemporary accounts of travellers in China. Most significantly in the account of the American politician William H. Seward, who had served as Secretary of State during the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, of a visit to Shanghai in 1870. Seward was invited to a ball given by Elizabeth Warden, the wife of the American merchant Henry H. Warden, where he explains:

‘At Mrs Warden’s ball, a colored man named Butler was received on a footing with the other guests. This Mr Butler, who is equally modest and intelligent, is a native of Washington, and was born a slave of Commodore Rodgers, the father of the present admiral. He is here superintendent of the ‘go-downs’, and charged with the entire freighting business of the Shanghai Steam-Navigation Company, receiving for his services a salary of four thousand dollars.’[7]

Seward’s account of Butler’s origins can be corroborated. The marriage register for St John’s Church, on Lafayette Square, Washington contains an entry for Butler’s parents: ‘Henry Butler, slave of Captain John Rodgers, and Susan Smith, slave of George Graham Esquire. May 3 1827.’[8] Butler was therefore born enslaved in the household of one of the most prominent naval officers in Washington, Commodore John Rodgers (1772-1838). Butler was almost certainly born at the Rodgers House, formerly at 717 Madison Place, now the location of the United States Court of Appeals, just across the square from the Whitehouse.

It is unclear how Butler first made it from Washington to China, although an account of Butler’s commercial activities given in the journal of the American Missionary Association in 1881 calls him ‘at one time a protégé of Anson Burlingame.’[9] It therefore seems likely that he was in some way connected to the diplomatic mission of the prominent abolitionist Anson Burlingame (1820-1870). Burlingame had been appointed American Minister to the Qing Empire by Abraham Lincoln in 1861. Burlingame forged important and lasting links with Qing officials. On the eve of his retirement he was asked to lead a diplomatic mission to America consisting of a retinue of Qing diplomats to familiarise them with the manners and customs of the west. Butler evidently stayed in China and forged close links with senior Qing diplomats, this probably explains his presence on Zeng Jize’s embassy to Europe.

Zeng Jize was appointed Chinese minister to Britain, France and Russia in 1878, a year after Butler married Annie Wilson. It seems likely that Butler accompanied the mission to Europe. Zeng’s duties as minister to France were dominated by the confrontation between France and China over Tonkin that would eventually culminate in the Sino-French War. Zeng’s denunciations of French policy in Tonkin began softly, following the capture of the citadel of Hanoi by Henri Rivière, but grew more insistent as French ambitions became clearer in the Summer of 1883, and reached a climax immediately after the Sơn Tây Campaign in December 1883. A series of diplomatic missteps resulted in Zeng being replaced as minister to France in 1885. Zeng and his mission spent more time in London concluding a trade agreement. It was whilst in London that Warren made his portrait of Zeng celebrating Chinese New Year, which remains untraced, and this remarkable drawing of Butler.

Butler evidently returned to China with Zeng. He subsequently appears in numerous accounts of western travellers in China. Matthew Horace Hayes, for example, left a long and informative account of Butler’s activities during the Sino-French War. Meeting him at Tientsin (Tianjin) Hayes claims to have had ‘many a discussion on the subject of l’équitation savante’ with Butler, whom he describes as: ‘the late private secretary of the Marquis of Tseng, the former Chinese Ambassador in England.’[10] Adding further that: ‘Mr Butler, who was an American ‘gentleman of colour’, was a man of rare talent and as discreet as William the Silent.’ Hayes then relays a long anecdote, which gives a sense of Butler as an operator:

‘During the Franco-Chinese War, having negotiated for his masters loan of several million dollars, he had, on duty connected with this matter, to proceed one night in a steam-launch down the Min River, which was full of torpedoes that had been placed in carefully-concealed positions to obstruct the navigation. As the most rapid possible dispatch was the order, he gave the word, ‘Steam ahead full speed’; trusting solely to luck to carry him safely through the terrible dangers that lay in his path. Thinking that the bow would be the first part of the boat which would strike any torpedo, he took a seat on the extreme end of the stern, in the hope that if an explosion did occur, he might contrive to tumble alive into the water, where he would have had to trust to the clemency of sharks and crocodiles to let him swim to land. The mental agony which he endured through that night of anxiety, was trebled by the fact that he was suffering at the time from a severe attack of fever. Morning, however, broke without an accident having occurred, and the traveller arrived in due course, safe at his destination. After the conclusion of the war, he happened by chance to be again on the Min River, at a time when the Chinese were taking up the torpedoes. When these machines were all landed, they were opened to see the condition of their contents, which were found to be powdered coal, instead of gunpowder. The official who had them filled, evidently understood the advantage which his position gave him to make money.’[11]

Butler died in Hong Kong in 1891, thirty years after first arriving in China.

This drawing offers an extraordinary window into a remarkable life. George Butler was born enslaved in Washington, in the house of the prominent Naval commander, John Rodgers. He joined Anson Burlingame’s mission to China in 1861, before being appointed confidential secretary to Zeng Jize, the Qing minister to Britain, France and Russia throughout the 1870s. Warren captures Butler at the height of his powers, showing him as a worldly, respected figure and one worthy of further research and study.