Researchers at the Art Gallery of Ontario have identified the artist and sitter of an 18th-century portrait of a young Black woman. The painting, purchased in 2020, is now titled 'Portrait of Eleonora Susette' (1775), revealing the subject as a woman born around 1756 in the Dutch colony of Berbice (now Guyana). The artist is Berlin-born Jeremias Schultz, who painted the portrait in Amsterdam after Eleonora Susette was brought there by her enslaver, the artist's cousin.
This discovery matters because it recovers the identity of a Black woman from the colonial era, moving her from an anonymous subject to a named individual with a specific, researched history. The identification, achieved through persistent archival work and a crucial email from descendants in the Netherlands, reframes the artwork as a document of a complex, transatlantic life shaped by enslavement and displacement. The portrait's new title and story resonate deeply with Toronto's large Caribbean community, transforming it from a generic aesthetic object into a point of historical connection and ongoing research into a life partially told.