Portrait of Yarrow Mamout (Muhammad Yaro)Made in Georgetown,
Washington, District of Columbia, United States, North and
Central America Charles Willson Peale, American, 1741 - 1827 Oil
on canvas |Purchased with the gifts (by exchange) of R. Wistar
Harvey, Mrs. T. Charlton Henry, R. Nelson Buckley, the estate of
Rictavia Schiff, the Edith H. Bell fund, the McNeil Acquisition
Fund for American Art and Material Culture, the Edward and
Althea Budd Fund, and with funds from the proceeds of the sale
of deaccessioned works of art, 2011| Yarrow Mamout, an African
American Muslim who won his freedom from slavery, was reputedly
140 years old in 1819, when Charles Willson Peale painted this
portrait for display in his Philadelphia Museum. Although Peale
learned this was a miscalculation, the story of eighty-three-
year-old Yarrow (c. 1736–1823), a native of the West African
country of Guinea who was literate in Arabic, was still
remarkable. As Peale noted, Yarrow was “comfortable in his
Situation having Bank stock and [h