illiam Lloyd Garrison, editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator and a key figure in the American Anti-Slavery Society, was an important catalyst in the upsurge of northern opposition to slavery that began in the 1830s. This portrait by New Haven, Connecticut, painter and engraver Nathaniel Jocelyn was commissioned by the artist's brother Simeon Smith Jocelyn, who planned to sell engravings of it to raise money for the abolitionist movement, as well as to heighten Garrison's public image. Garrison wrote about the portrait: "I think [Jocelyn] has succeeded in making a very tolerable likeness. To be sure, those who imagine that I am a monster, on seeing it, will doubt or deny its accuracy, seeing no horns about the head; but my friends, I think, will recognize it easily."

Nathaniel Jocelyn (1796–1881)
Oil on panel, 1833
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Bequest of Garrison Norton
NPG.96.102

Enlarged image

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