Lot Essay
William Joseph Williams was born in New York City in 1759, where he worked as a portrait and miniature painter from 1779 to 1792. From 1793 until 1807, Williams worked in Philadelphia and as far south as South Carolina and New Bern, North Carolina, until 1807 when he returned to New York City. Williams spent the last five years of his life in New Bern, where he died in 1823. See Groce and Wallace, Dictionary of Artists in America (New Haven, 1957), p. 691.