William Moseley (d. ca. 1655)

William Moseley was an English expatriate living in Rotterdam. He married a woman named Susannah. They immigrated with their sons William and Arthur to Virginia in ca. 1649. The family settled at an estate in Lynnhaven Parish that came to be known as Rolleston Hall. They apparently brought at least four family portraits with them, which descended in the family in Norfolk through the nineteenth century. It is assumed that they were painted in Rotterdam before emigrating.

According to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century descriptions and a black-and-white photograph, the subject has one hand on his hip and has facial hair. He wears an elaborate suite with a large, square, lace collar.

See: Charles Bolton, The Founders: Portraits of Persons Born Abroad (1919), 175-189; Essex Institute Historical Collection, v. 49 (1913), 178-183; Carolyn J. Weekley, Painters and Paintings in the Early American South (2013), 66-67.