The Story of Edward Hill and the African Groom at Shirley Plantation

Abstract

I have looked at hundreds of colonial portraits, and the most intriguing figure that I have seen is unnamed, barely visible, only about five inches tall, and whose face is largely obscured. This figure is an African groom—who I can now argue is the first known representation of a person of African descent in a British North American painting.

Keywords

• 6.2
• janine yorimoto boldt
• john closterman
• john riley
• seventeenth-century art
• shirley plantation
• sir godfrey kneller
• willem wissing