Painting of black sailor found to be bogus

When Fraunces Tavern launched an exhibit, "Fighting for Freedom, Black Patriots and Loyalists," they were excited to receive an offer of a portrait of a black American sailor. The offer came from a retired urologist, Dr. Alexander McBurney, who had bought the painting in 1975 when bicentennial enthusiasm was running high. The sailor is standing in front of an American ship, wearing a blue officers' coat and a shirt open to his waist. McBurney decided to get the painting cleaned up for the exhibit and sent it to Boston. There, restorers started working on the black hand with solvent; to their amazement, the hand turned white. More solvent was applied to the brown chest and they discovered underneath it an expensive white shirt. This was duly reported to Dr. McBurney. Then he received a phone call from Fraunces Tavern. "How's our black sailor doing?" he was asked. "He's just fine but he's white," McBurney said. Apparently a very devious forger had created the black sailor by painting over an original white sailor, to satisfy our current eagerness to find black 18th Century heroes. Fraunces Tavern replaced the sailor with Jean Baptiste Le Paon's portrait, "Lafayette at Yorktown," in which the French hero stands besides his black valet, James Armistead, who became a very good spy during the runup to the victorious siege. As for Dr. McBurney, he has had the sailor painted black (or more precisely, brown) again and rehung it in his dining room. "He's an old friend," he said.