In 1928, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London acquired a previously unknown portrait. It shows the Black Jamaican polymath Francis Williams (c. 1690-1762), dressed in a wig, surrounded by books and scientific instruments. In all of the previous history of Western art, there is no other image like this: a man who had been born into slavery, shown as a gentleman and scholar. The museum presumed it was a satire — but who had made it, when, where, and why, has remained a mystery ever since.
Fara Dabhoiwala will reveal the astonishing story of the painting’s true meaning, its connections to the greatest scientists of the Enlightenment — and Francis Williams’s extraordinary message to posterity.