A PORTRAIT of Mary Seacole, the black nurse whose work in the Crimea was eclipsed by Florence Nightingale, was finally put on display yesterday after its discovery beneath a framed print.

The image of a woman who overcame racial prejudice to become a nursing pioneer was painted in 1869 by a London artist, Albert Challen. It had been used as backing for a print which was bought by a dealer at a car-boot sale in Warwickshire. The portrait, which measures about 9½in by 7in, was found because the inscription on the back, “AC Challen, 1869”, caught the dealer’s eye. He unsealed the frame and discovered the painting.

Apparently unaware of its significance, he sold it at auction to another dealer who showed it to a military historian. Intrigued, he contacted Helen Rappaport, a women’s historian, who had been researching Seacole for three years. “I nearly fell off my chair as soon as I saw it,” she said yesterday. “It’s a defining image of her, dignified, mature and at the height of her powers.”

She identified her from a bust of 1871 and a photograph, which feature the same Creole scarf and medals — the British Crimean medal, the Turkish Medjidie and the French Legion of Honour — as those in the oil painting.

It is now on indefinite loan to the National Portrait Gallery. The display coincides with the 200th anniversary of Seacole’s birth. Sandy Nairne, director of the gallery, said: “This is a wonderful discovery. A painted portrait allows us to appreciate the important 19th-century figure of Mary Seacole in new ways.”

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Seacole learnt nursing and herbal medicine from her mother, a Jamaican of mixed race who kept a boarding house for invalid soldiers.

With the outbreak of war with Russia in 1854, she sailed to England and volunteered for Nightingale’s nursing contingent but was refused an interview.

Undaunted, Seacole made her own way to the Crimea where she established the British Hotel near Balaklava to provide “a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers”.

Known as “Mother Seacole”, she was a familiar figure to readers of The Times. In 1856 William Howard Russell, a special correspondent, wrote: “I have witnessed her devotion and her courage . . . and I trust that England will never forget one who has nursed her sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them.”

She returned to England destitute, never to receive a commendation from Queen Victoria.

Ms Rappaport said: “Now she can join Queen Victoria and Florence Nightingale in Room 23 (at the gallery) where she jolly well belongs.”

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