The Vassall family derived their wealth from the imperialist export of sugar and rum from the West Indies to England, relying on the forced labor of enslaved people from West Africa. The Vassalls lived comfortably in Boston and London, far from their plantations where the enslaved worked tirelessly and endured horrific cruelties. When the Vassall estate was probated in Jamaica in 1738, the family had enslaved 131 people, and slavery was not abolished in the British Empire until 1833.

William Vassall (1715–1800) was born on his family’s Jamaica plantation but raised in Boston, where he was known for his luxurious and profligate lifestyle. Copley’s sympathetic portrait of Vassall demonstrates the cruel hypocrisy of an American society in which two contrary public identities—doting father and enslaver—were allowed to coexist.