Moses Williams

Moses Williams (1777–c.1825) was an African-American visual artist who was particularly well known as a maker of silhouettes. He was a former slave of the artist Charles Willson Peale. Early life, slavery, and education Moses Williams was born in 1777 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Scarborough and Lucy Peale, who were slaves in the home of renowned artist and museum-owner Charles Willson Peale. It is believed that Williams's parents began to work for Peale sometime between 1769 and 1775. In 1786, Peale emancipated Williams's parents, and Williams's father, Scarborough, changed his name to John Williams and passed along his new last name to his son. Although Williams's parents were freed, the law mandated that the nine-year-old Moses remain in Peale's service until his twenty-seventh birthday and so Williams grew up in the Peale household among Peale's many artistic children, including Rembrandt Peale, Raphaelle Peale, Franklin Peale and Titian Ramsay Peale. Silhouette maker Growing up in the Peale household, Williams was instructed in skills that would help him to work at Peale's Museum, including taxidermy, object display, and silhouette-making. As a slave, he was not taught the "higher art" of painting.