Studio note — After Moses Williams (August 2026 research)

Moses Williams (1777 – c.1825) was born to enslaved parents in the household of the painter Charles Willson Peale. Unlike Peale's biological children, he was not taught to paint — he was taught to cut silhouettes. From a booth at the Peale Philadelphia Museum he cut the profile of anyone who paid, working the physiognotrace and finishing the black by hand. From that trade he earned enough to be manumitted a year before Pennsylvania law required, buy a house, and start a family. The teaching gallery at the Peale Museum in Baltimore now bears his name.

After Moses Williams borrows his instrument — the reduced, unforgiving profile — and turns it on the faces the current museum-of-the-feed keeps circulating. The tobacco-cloth ground is deliberate: it names the economy the original silhouettes were quietly stitched into.

The series opens with ten plates and a contact sheet. Weekly field notes, source bibliography, and a gated production dossier will fill through August 2026.