William Berryman

Who is William Berryman?

William Berryman was an English artist who was active in Jamaica during the period 1808–1816. He produced over three hundred pencil sketches and watercolours of the Jamaican landscape and the daily lives of the island's people. His work demonstrates particular interest in the lives of the island's majority inhabitants: people of African and mixed descent. He planned a project of making an engraving series based upon his Jamaican artwork, but died before he could undertake it.

Berryman's unpublished work was neglected until it was recently rediscovered in an album. The United States Library of Congress acquired the collection. His work was exhibited at the Yale University Center for British Art at New Haven, Connecticut, United States and at the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol, England, in 2007 and 2008.