Black silhouette artist and entrepreneur Moses Williams in early America

Moses Williams was an African-American profile cutter in the household of world-renown portrait artist and first museum entrepreneur Charles Willson Peale, in the early 19th century. Moses was initially a slave, the child of slaves who were given to Peale possibly as payment for a portrait. Moses was treated as one of the family, and then manumitted (freed) by Peale in 1802. Moses showed extraordinary skill at creating profile portraits

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