“In 1753… David Hume had published a revised version of one of his celebrated essays, on ‘National Characters’. In a lengthy new footnote, he asserted that ‘negroes’ were in every way ‘naturally inferior’ to ‘whites’. He claimed that there never had been, and never would be, a single Black person distinguished in either arts or sciences.”
That’s Fara Dabhoiwala (Princeton) in the London Review of Books, in a fascinating detective-story account of an 18th century portrait of Francis Williams, a Jamaican man whose scientific abilities earned him a nomination to membership in the Royal Society in 1716 (which was ultimately denied because he was black).
Dabhoiwala notes that during his lifetime, Williams “had been the most famous Black person in the world, at least among educated English-speaking people. He was rich; he was a gentleman; he was a scholar; he was celebrated as a clever and accomplished person.”
At the time of his revising of “Of National Characters“, Hume was aware of Williams, and refers to him in that same footnote. Dabhoiwala writes:
the final sentence of Hume’s footnote trains its sights on Williams, dismissing him as a freak: ‘In Jamaica indeed, they talk of one negro, as a man of parts and learning; but ’tis likely he is admir’d for very slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly.’ Later scientific racists… invariably quoted Hume as a great authority.
The portrait Dabhoiwala investigates (a part of which is reproduced above) had long been thought to have been painted in 1735— before Hume’s footnote. What Dabhoiwala reveals in his article is how he determined that the portrait was really painted sometime around 1760.
Dabhoiwala writes:
What difference does it make to know that this picture dates from 1760, rather than two or three decades earlier? Quite a lot. It signifies that we are looking at Francis Williams after David Hume’s vicious, racist attack on him in 1753. Williams would have been acutely aware of that intellectual assault: it could not have been more public. The portrait is a rejoinder to it. It demonstrates that its sitter is indeed a ‘man of parts and learning’ – someone of talent and accomplishment in many fields.
For those interested in learning more about those accomplishments, and how they’re communicated by the painting, read the whole article.
(via Stephen Menn and Mohan Matthen)
This gentleman was not without sin. Far from it, as he was a slave-owner himself. As Dabhoiwala notes, many freedmen in Jamaica were. (This shows, by the way, that eighteenth century views on slavery were independent of views about race: you could hold that Blacks were equal but that any person can be made a slave, or that Blacks were unequal but that slavery was cruel and morally odious.)
But he was offended by being viciously traduced by Hume. After all, his scientific understanding was much deeper than Hume’s own, and he had accordingly been nominated to the Royal Society of London (and refused entry because of his “complection.” Dabhoiwala shows how the painting he commissioned is an elaborate rejoinder. Each part of the painting has meaning, particularly the book to which William points and the view from his window. But since it is a detective story, the denouement comes right at the end.
Dabhoiwala’s piece is a compelling read. Thanks, Justin, for not including spoilers.
A fantastic ending! Thanks for this extra nudge, Mohan.
Stylistically, I would have sworn that was a late-nineteenth or early twentieth-century painting, not one from the mid-eighteenth century. It looks so far removed from the Academy style of the time. Super neat.
That’s interesting. I wonder whether it looks that way because the stiff, almost cartoonish rendition of Williams’ body, which looks like a crude reference to demotic styles, such references being a mark of later painting. (Hello Gaugin!) In this case, though, as Dabhoiwala relates, some suspected a different motive for the distortion: a “satirical denigration of Black bodies for white entertainment.” Given all the references within the painting to the sitter’s erudition–the globes, the book titles on his shelf (revealed by a high-resolution infrared scan)–this is unlikely. The painting glorifies; it doesn’t denigrate. Dabhoiwala offers another explanation. He brilliantly attributes the painting to one William Williams, a self-taught artist who “never fully mastered bodily proportions.”
It reminded me of American folk art portraits. I think of that as a 19th-century style, but it seems like it was coming into being about this time. Makes sense, given the career of the artist (trying to keep out the spoilers!!).
Wonderful article. Thanks for the link, Justin.
It is striking that even in the 18th century, white men were arguing that an accomplished black scholar must have been promoted because of his race, in a society where (to put it extremely mildly) the opposite tended to be the case.
This passage:
also reminded me of the observation that philosophers sometimes obsess about furniture instead of the way that social power shapes our world.