Portrait of a Man, probably Francis Barber

In Paris in 1800 Marie-Guilhelmine Benoist exhibited at the Salon what is perhaps the most beautiful portrait of a black woman ever painted...

It is by the finest tints, and most insensible gradations, that nature descends from the fairest face about St. James’s, to the sootiest complexion in Africa: at which tint of these, is it, that the ties of blood are to cease? And how many shades must we descend lower still in the scale, ‘ere Mercy is to vanish with them?—but ‘tis no uncommon thing, my good Sancho, for one...