How you can use this image

This image is available to be shared and re-used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND).

You can reproduce this image for non-commercial purposes and you are not able to change or modify it in any way.

Wherever you reproduce the image you must attribute the original creators (acknowledge the original artist(s) and the person/organisation that took the photograph of the work) and any other rights holders.

Review our guidance pages which explain how you can reuse images, how to credit an image and how to find more images in the public domain or with a Creative Commons licence available.

Download

More information

Buy a print or image licence

You can purchase this reproduction

If you have any products in your basket we recommend that you complete your purchase from Art UK before you leave our site to avoid losing your purchases.

Order a print

Notes

Add or edit a note on this artwork that only you can see. You can find notes again by going to the ‘Notes’ section of your account.

Downman was one of the most fashionable portraitists of his day. However, it is his original sketches of his sitters (rather than his finished portraits, executed in coloured chalks) which tend to show his insight into personality at its best. This is a remarkably sensitive late sketch of a black sailor made, as the inscription indicates, in Liverpool in 1815. Thomas Williams seems to have been acquainted with the famous MP William Wilberforce (1759–1833) who played a vital part in the passing of the 1807 Act which made slave trading illegal. The black chalk has been softened and smudged by Downman using a stump (a tightly rolled paper or leather cylinder with rounded points). This enabled him to model faces and flesh tones with great subtlety.

Tate

Art UK Founder Partner

More information

Title

Thomas Williams, a Black Sailor

Date

1815

Medium

Chalk and graphite on paper

Measurements

H 31.5 x W 28.5 cm

Accession number

T10168

Acquisition method

Purchased as part of the Oppé Collection with the assistance of the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund 1996

Work type

Drawing

Artist or maker

John Downman

1749–1824

View profile

Portrait of a Girl English Heritage, Battle Abbey
Rear Vice-Admiral Maude Victoria and Albert Museum
John Mortlock (1755–1816), Mayor of Cambridge 13 Times Cambridge Guildhall
Portrait of a Lady seated under a Tree Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Mrs Thomas Pardoe (b.1737) Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Portrait of a Lady Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Mary Palmer (1759–1847), Lady Beauchamp-Proctor, Sacrificing to Hymen National Trust, Peckover House
48 more