A Hidden Clue Changed Everything We Knew About This Portrait - The Francis Williams Portrait

For decades, people thought this painting was making fun of the man standing inside it. But hidden in the books, the curtain and even the night sky outside his window are clues that suggest almost the exact opposite. And one of those clues was only discovered in 2024. This is Francis Williams, an 18th century Jamaican scholar, mathematician, poet and astronomer. The portrait was probably painted around 1759. And when it appeared on the London art market in 1928, almost nothing was known about it. The artist was unknown. Its original purpose was unknown. And even today, much of Francis Williams' life remains surprisingly difficult to reconstruct. But at first glance, the painting seems fairly straightforward. Williams is dressed like an educated gentleman of the 18th century. He's wearing expensive clothes and a powdered wig. Behind him is a library filled with books. And beside him are two globes. One terrestrial, representing the earth, and another representing the heavens. And on the table in front of him is an open scientific text. Everything seems designed to tell us this is a man of learning. And Francis Williams certainly was. He was born in Jamaica during the 1690s, when the island was still an English colony. His parents had been enslaved, but were later emancipated. They became wealthy landowners themselves, eventually building enough wealth to send Francis to England for his education. Williams studied law, mathematics, and Newtonian physics. He wrote poetry in Latin. And after returning to Jamaica, he established a free school for black children, where he taught subjects including reading, writing, Latin, and mathematics. But his story is complicated. His family also owned enslaved people, and Williams himself inherited enslaved people as part of the family estate. And most importantly for understanding this painting, very few of Williams's own writings survive. Much of what we know about him comes from other people. And one of the most influential was a man named Edward Long. Long knew Williams personally. He was also a plantation owner, a slave owner, and the author of A Deeply Racist History of Jamaica. In that book, Long described Williams's intelligence almost as an experiment. Could a black man, if given the same education as a white man, become his intellectual equal? Long's answer was essentially no. He even quoted the philosopher David Hume, who dismissed Williams's achievements by comparing an educated black man to a parrot that had learned to speak a few words. And strangely enough, this painting eventually ended up in Edward Long's possession. Which brings us back to the portrait, because once historians knew that history, some began to see the painting very differently. Look carefully at Williams's body. His hands seem unusually small. His feet are tiny. His legs are remarkably thin compared with the rest of his body. The painting is detailed, but the anatomy is awkward. And that led to a disturbing possibility. What if this wasn't an admiring portrait at all? What if it was a caricature? Perhaps Williams was being presented as a black man pretending to be a sophisticated European scholar, surrounded by books and scientific instruments, but looking slightly ridiculous in the role. Even quite recently, scholars continued to interpret the As late as 2018, it was exhibited in Brazil and described as possibly having been created with satirical intentions. But there is a problem with that interpretation, because the more closely researchers have examined the objects surrounding Williams, the more deliberate the painting seems to become. Start with the books. The library contains works covering Latin, medicine, astronomy, architecture, theology, and philosophy. One appears to be Samuel Johnson's famous dictionary, published in 1755. But the most important book is sitting open directly in front of Williams. It's Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica, one of the most important scientific books ever written. And it isn't simply included as a generic symbol of intelligence. It's open to a very specific section. Page 521. And that page deals with something extraordinary. Comets. More specifically, the mathematics used to calculate their movement through the solar system. This matters because Williams had a real connection to Newton's scientific world. During his time in England, Williams attended lectures at the Royal Society, the institution over which Newton presided. And in 1716, when Williams was only around 21 or 22 years old, he was reportedly proposed for election as a fellow of the Royal Society. But according to an 18th century account, he was rejected purely because of his skin color. So suddenly Newton's book isn't just decoration, it's personal. And then there is the curtain. Behind Williams, a golden cord holds the curtain back. Look at the knot in that cord. Historian Farah de Puywalla has suggested that its looping shape may represent the orbit of a comet around the sun. Which brings us to perhaps the most remarkable detail in the entire painting. Look through the window. Outside is a nighttime view of Spanish Town in Jamaica. For years, it looked like little more than a background, until researchers examined the painting more closely. In 2024, x-ray imaging revealed that the stars outside the window appear to match the part of the sky where Halley's comet would have been visible during its famous return in 1759. And in the sky is a faint streak of white light, possibly the comet itself. Halley had predicted that the Neither Halley nor Newton lived long enough to see that prediction confirmed. But on Christmas night in 1758, the comet reappeared. And throughout 1759, it was visible to observers around the world, including Jamaica. So now look at the portrait again. Francis Williams stands beside astronomical globes. Newton's book is open to a section about comets. A curtain cord may echo a comet's orbit. And outside his window is the night sky of 1759, apparently showing Halley's comet. This no longer looks like a random collection of symbols associated with education. It looks like a very specific statement. Researchers now think Williams may have commissioned the painting himself to commemorate his own observation of Halley's comet. If that's true, this isn't a portrait laughing at a man who wanted to appear intelligent. It's a portrait of an astronomer celebrating one of the greatest scientific predictions of his age. And it may even be the only known contemporary portrait of an astronomer recording the return of Halley's comet. There's even an explanation for those strange hands and legs. The artist may have been William Williams, a British-born painter who worked in Jamaica around this period. Another portrait attributed to him, this one of the abolitionist Benjamin Lay, shows similar awkward proportions, including slender legs and unusually small hands. In other words, what generations interpreted as deliberate caricature may simply have been the artist's style. There's another possibility. Some historians have suggested that Francis Williams might have painted the portrait himself. We simply don't know. But whoever held the brush, Williams almost certainly had a major influence over what appears in the painting. And that completely changes its meaning. Francis Williams lived in a society where prominent intellectuals openly claimed that people of African descent were naturally inferior. He was reportedly denied admission to one of Britain's greatest scientific institutions because of his race. Yet here he stands, surrounded by literature, mathematics, astronomy, Newton, and above Jamaica, the comet whose return demonstrated the extraordinary power of the scientific ideas Williams had spent his life studying. For decades, people looked at his portrait and wondered whether it was mocking him. Perhaps the painting was doing something much more powerful. Perhaps Francis Williams was looking back at the people who doubted him and answering them. If you've enjoyed this video and would like to support the channel, please consider subscribing.