Portrait of a Man From the Island of Dominica?

A Black man wearing a white suit and tall cap is the subject of this late eighteenth-century portrait. Identified in the 1940s as a possible Charles Willson Peale portrait of George Washington’s enslaved chef, Hercules Posey, the oil painting has appeared in many publications and exhibitions. Martha Washington’s grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, described Posey as a well-dressed, larger than life figure in the President’s Philadelphia household. Research undertaken from 2017 to 2019 at Mount Vernon, by art historians, curators, and conservators, concluded that the portrait was not by Charles Willson Peale, and was almost definitely not a portrait of Posey. Evidence suggests that the portrait is of an as yet unidentified man from the Island of Dominica.