The mystery surrounding a child’s identity in a Liverpool painting has yet to be solved.
The Black Boy is a painting by Pre-Raphaelite artist William Lindsay Windus and was acquired in 1948 as part of the Walker Art Gallery’s collection. It has been on display at the International Slavery Museum since 2007.
Little is known about the subject of the painting - who gawks at the viewer, “alone and barefoot in loose and torn clothing”. While the child’s identity remains unknown, there is a story attached to his chance encounter with the artist.
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The boy was supposedly a stowaway who came to the city and was found by Windus on the doorstep of the Monument Hotel. Where the child was originally from remains unclear - however, it is thought he possibly travelled from America, where slavery remained legal until 1865.
Windus “took pity” on him and gave him work as an errand boy. The painting was then displayed in a frame maker’s window and a sailor relative of the boy recognised him. This relative eventually brought him home and reunited him with his parents. It is not certain if this anecdote - first told in an 1891 catalogue of paintings by Whitworth Wallis and Arthur Bensley Chamberlain - is true or not.
However, Kate Haselden, who has been researching the 180-year-old portrait for the museum for months now, is determined to find out if it is. She told the ECHO: “Information could be anywhere - maybe you have surviving documents from the Liverpool Academy of Arts in the 1840s (which Windus was a member of) or have letters from William Windus himself.
“Perhaps Windus is an ancestor of yours. The
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