Joshua Reynolds Portrait at Saltram Identified as Boston Jersey, a Black Boy Baptized as George Walker
A 1748 portrait by Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) has been linked to a named Black subject after researchers in the United Kingdom identified the sitter as Boston Jersey, baptized in Westminster, London, as George Walker. The finding gives new specificity to a work long understood only in broad terms, and it adds a human history to a painting now hanging at Saltram, the early Georgian mansion in Devon, southwest England.
The identification emerged from a collaboration among the National Trust, the National Gallery in London, and Royal Museums Greenwich. Researchers drew on admiralty records and material from the National Archives, including a baptism entry dated July 30, 1752 that described him as “a certain Black boy called Boston Jersey baptised by the name of George Walker aged fifteen.” On that basis, scholars believe Walker was about 11 years old when Reynolds painted him in 1748.
The portrait was commissioned by the Corporation of Plympton, alongside a portrait of Captain George Edgumbe, which Reynolds executed in his Plymouth Dock studio. Technical examination of the painting, including x-ray fluorescence and infrared reflectography, suggests the artist initially intended a richer natural setting before settling on the plain brown background visible today. The analysis also indicates that Walker’s head was not built up through the same preliminary layers used for Paul Henry Ourry, leading scholars to conclude the image was unlikely to have been made from sittings.
Archival research also reconstructed part of Walker’s naval career. He boarded HMS Monmouth in December 1748, already promoted to able seaman. By 1751, records show he had moved from being Ourry’s servant to a place among the crew. His name later appears as due for discharge “per paybook,” which may indicate unpaid Royal Navy wages, though those sums may instead have gone to Ourry. Walker was discharged from HMS Deptford in 1753, most likely in Minorca. No further trace of Boston Jersey or George Walker has yet been found.
For Saltram curator Zoe Shearman, the significance is not only archival but moral: the project gives Boston Jersey recognition as a person rather than a type. The conserved painting will return to view at Saltram on May 9, alongside its companion portrait on loan from London’s National Maritime Museum, and remain on display until November 1.
The identification joins a growing body of museum research that is restoring names, biographies, and dignity to Black figures long left anonymous in European portraiture.
