A Life in Brushstrokes

In the quiet corners of colonial Boston, a man named Prince Demah moved through a world of strict boundaries. Born around 1745, his early years were shaped by the life of his mother, Daphney, an enslaved woman who worked as a cook. By 1769, a merchant named Henry Barnes had purchased Demah, noting a specific intention to cultivate the young man's talent for painting. This decision led Demah across the Atlantic to London, where he received instruction from a painter named Mr. Pine. It was a rare path for a man of African ancestry in the late 1700s, a movement from the domestic service of a household to the formal study of light and form in a distant city.

The years following his time in London were marked by a shifting identity. When the American Revolutionary War broke out, Demah did not return to the status of a piece of property. In April 1777, he enlisted in the Massachusetts militia as a free man. He chose to leave behind the name of his former enslaver, signing himself simply as Prince Demah. This choice was a quiet, firm reclamation of his own personhood, a detail that remains etched in the historical record of his service.

The Surviving Portraits

Only a few traces of his hand remain, scattered like fragments of a broken mirror. We know of his work through three specific portraits that survived the passage of time. One is a portrait of William Duguid, a Scottish textile merchant, which hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In that work, he signed his name as Prince Demah Barnes and dated it 1773. It is a rare, tangible link to a man who lived through the upheaval of a revolution.

Other works, though unsigned, are believed to be his. These include portraits of Henry and Christian Barnes, his former owners, which are held by the Hingham Historical Society. While these pieces lack a signature, the hand that guided the brush is often identified by scholars through the specific way he captured a face. We also know from old advertisements and records that he worked in pastel and painted at least six other portraits that have since been lost to history. He was a limner, a man who captured the likeness of others in an era when such a profession was almost entirely reserved for white men.

A Final Record

The end of his life was as brief as his career was intense. Demah died in 1778, likely from an illness like smallpox. Before he passed, he took care to write a will on March 11, 1778. In those final lines, he described himself with clarity: "Prince Demah of Boston...a limner and a free Negro." He left his estate to his mother, Daphney, ensuring that his final act was one of care for the woman who had been his constant through the years of his life. He was buried at Trinity Church in Boston, the same place where he and his mother had been baptized decades earlier.