Moses Williams (artist)

Moses Williams
Silhouette of Moses Williams
Born
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US
Known forSilhouette making
PatronsCharles Willson Peale

Moses Williams (c. 1777 – c. 1830) was a formerly enslaved African American visual artist who made tens of thousands of silhouettes for visitors to Peale's Philadelphia Museum. He was associated with Philadelphia-based artist Charles Willson Peale.

Early life, slavery, and education

Moses Williams was born into slavery circa 1777 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to enslaved parents Scarborough and Lucy Peale.[1] While living in Annapolis, Maryland, sometime between 1769 and 1775, renowned artist Charles Willson Peale had acquired Williams's parents.[1] In 1786, Peale manumitted Williams's parents in accordance with Pennsylvania state law, and Williams's father, Scarborough, changed his name to John Williams. Years later, upon gaining his freedom, Williams took his father's surname.[1]

Although Williams's parents had been freed, the law mandated that the nine-year-old Moses remain in Peale's service until his twenty-eighth birthday. Consequently, Williams grew up in the Peale household alongside Peale's many artistic children, including Rembrandt Peale, Raphaelle Peale, Franklin Peale, and Titian Ramsay Peale.[1]

The Philadelphia Daily News at one point described Williams as a "light mulatto man" who was "pleasant" and "witty." Similarly, Peale himself referred to his enslaved worker in a 1799 diary entry as “my Molatto [sic] Man Moses,” indicating that Williams was multiracial. With his long, straight hair tied back in a queue, as depicted in his 1803 silhouette, he may have sought to anglicize his features.[1]

"Man Wearing Feather Cloak and Helmet" by Rembrandt Peale, with Moses Williams as the model

Silhouette maker

Growing up in the Peale household, Williams received training in areas such as taxidermy, object display, and silhouette-making in order to work at Peale's Philadelphia Museum.[1] With Rembrandt Peale and sculptor William Rush, Williams probably worked on the museum's famous mastodon exhibit.[2] Enslaved, he was not taught the "higher art" of painting.[1]

After showing skill at silhouette-making, Williams was supplied with a physiognotrace machine to make silhouettes. He continued to work at Peale's museum as a freedman and professional silhouette artist, making black-and-white paper silhouettes for museum visitors.[1] He produced more than 8,000 silhouettes during his first year working at Peale's museum.[3] He earned 6 to 8 cents for every silhouette he cut.[4] He also created silhouettes of the Peale family, including Charles Willson Peale and his wife, Elizabeth.[5] Williams' silhouettes were stamped simply "Museum," so his legacy received scant scholarly attention until the 1990s.[6]

With the money he earned making silhouettes, Williams purchased his freedom one year in advance of his 28th birthday and purchased a two-story brick house on 10 Sterling Alley in Philadelphia, becoming one of the few African Americans to own property in Philadelphia. He also married Maria (surname unknown), a white woman who had worked as Peale's cook. He had at least four children.[1][6]

By 1823, silhouette-cutting as a profession was in decline, and Williams had to sell his house.[1] According to the Author's Note in The Poison Place, a novel about Moses Williams, he was listed in city directories as a profile cutter until 1833.[7] There is no scholarly consensus on his exact date of death, with estimates ranging from 1825 to 1833, though the probability lies with the latter date.

Public institutions

Williams' silhouettes can be found in the collections of several institutions, including the following:

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Shaw, Gwendolyn DuBois (March 2005). ""Moses Williams, Cutter of Profiles": Silhouettes and African American Identity in the Early Republic" (PDF). Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 149 (1): 22–39. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-05-01. Retrieved 2025-09-22.
  2. ^ O’Connor, Ariel (April 29, 2020). "Mysteries of the First Mastodon". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Archived from the original on 2025-03-29. Retrieved 2025-09-22.
  3. ^ "Jefferson Portrait by Raphaelle Peale", Monticello, Retrieved 28 March 2015.
  4. ^ Bellion, Wendy. "The Mechanization of Likeness in Jeffersonian America"Archived 2015-09-19 at the Wayback Machine, MIT Communications Forum, Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  5. ^ Farago, Jason. "Represent: 200 Years of African American Art review", The Guardian, Retrieved 28 March 2015.
  6. ^ a b Meier, Allison (2018-06-07). "The Former Slave Who Became a Master Silhouette Artist". JSTOR Daily. Retrieved 2025-09-22.
  7. ^ "Author's Note" The Poison Place: A Novel, by Mary E. Lyons, Retrieved 29 Oct 2019.
  8. ^ "Collections : Artist/Maker's Name: Moses Williams", Philadelphia Museum of Art, Retrieved 28 March 2015.
  9. ^ "Revealed Silhouette of a Young Woman" Archived 2015-04-02 at the Wayback Machine, Museum of Fine Art Houston, Retrieved 28 March 2015.
  10. ^ "Moses Williams, Cutter of Profiles [graphic]", Library Company of Philadelphia, Retrieved 14 August 2018.
allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Williams_(artist)