Williams, William (c. 1727–c. 1791)

British painter. A producer of fine portraits, such as Deborah Hall (1766), he was born in Bristol, England. After a career as a seaman, he arrived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1747, where he began painting, as well as constructing a theatre in Philadelphia in 1759. He wrote an autobiographical novel, The Journal of Llewellyn Penrose, a Seaman (1776). He returned to Bristol in 1776, and died in an almshouse.