A Man of Parts and Learning
Fara Dabhoiwala: Francis Williams Gets His Due, 21 November 2024
“... is also shaped, inescapably, by our collective awareness of centuries of racist visual polemic. Lay and expert viewers of varied backgrounds have instinctively worried that the portrayal of Williams might fit into the long tradition of Western image-making that denigrates Black bodies for white entertainment. In 2018, when the painting was included in a ... ”