Captain Abraham Vorhees

Micah Williams

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Williams began his career as a silver plater in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Financial hardships, however, landed him in debtors’ prison in 1814. After his release, he embarked upon his second career, as an itinerant portraitist to New Jersey’s middle class. He worked primarily in pastel, a medium that enabled him to execute likenesses quickly and inexpensively. Williams completed this portrait when the sitter was in his seventies. Signs of age are visible in the highly stylized wrinkles on his face, yet the work’s stiffness is relieved by soft pastel contours and accents of vibrant color, used to capture Vorhees’s piercing blue eyes and the gold buttons on his double-breasted jacket.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art