Portrait of Francis Williams

Oil on canvas full-length portrait of the Jamaican scholar and writer Francis Williams, his heade slightly to the viewer's left, his body slightly to the viewer's right. He wears a grey powdered periwig, a long blue justacorps faced with yellow, a long grey waistcoat with gold lace at the buttonholes, dark blue breeches, loose grey stockings and buckle shoes. The accoutrements of his education and learning - a celestial and a territorial globe, dividers and other instruments - are clearly visible. Beautifully bound books line the shelves behind him, including works by Newton, Locke, Cowley, Sherlock and Rapin, and his left hand rests on an open book headed Newton's Philosophy. But while the painting clearly locates Francis within the tradition of European scholarship, it also - by virtue of the open window that reveals the sparkling landscape of Spanish Town, the beach and bright azure blue of the sky- sets him firmly within a Jamaican setting.

Francis Williams was a Jamaican poet and a scholar. The painter of his portrait, who probably worked in Jamaica, has copied the style and format of European portraits. He or she must have seen examples of such pictures, or, more likely, prints reproducing them. There were conventions in representing scholarly men, and the artist has used several of them here. Williams is shown as a scholar in his book-lined study, with a globe of the world, and a celestial globe on the table. Dividers and other instruments are also strewn on the table. All this indicates that he has studied astronomy, mathematics and geography. A landscape, presumably of Spanish Town, Jamaica, is visible through the window, showing that Williams was resident there. It has been suggested that this portrait is a caricature of Williams because the painter has shown him with a large head and legs so thin that his stockings are wrinkled. However, Williams may have wanted to be shown in this manner to emphasise his intellectual rather than physical stature.