Denis Williams (1923 – 1998) received the first-ever British Council Scholarship granted to an artist from British Guiana in 1945. While it has been recorded posthumously from the recollections of a much younger contemporary that Williams received this award for the skill exhibited in Portrait of Peter (see a reproduction with last week’s article), I believe that Self-Portrait with a Towel was a more likely contender.
The latter was painted in 1945, the same year as the award, and demonstrates far superior skills than the former. With the latter, we see a superb understanding of the anatomy of the face, and both a psychological and aspirational presence of the sitter. This Williams painted in oil has ideas about himself that are not those of a colonial subject in subjection. The work, therefore, anticipates the kind of colonial subject Williams would become – one willing to gently and robustly fray the tethers of coloniality. Self-portrait with a Towel was coincidentally the work meditated upon by a young Arlington Weithers which he used to train his eyes (see Eye on Art May 21, 2023). This work Weithers spoke of now identified was not painted while Williams was in Sudan, but seen by the younger relation years later while the older was off in the distant land.
