Guillaume Guillon Lethière (1760-1832) was a stalwart of Neoclassical history painting and the first notable artist of color in modern France. Born in Guadeloupe in the French West Indies, Lethière was the illegitimate son of Pierre Guillon, a white royal official, and Marie-Françoise Dupepaye, a freed black slave. As the third child of the family, he went by “Letiers” (i.e. “le tiers,” or “the th
