Three Boys

Water-selling was an everyday street trade in 17th-century Seville, a city where slavery was common. Dulwich Picture Gallery now reads the standing boy here as a water-seller of African heritage, either enslaved or freed. He is better dressed than the other two, in a brown cropped jacket and laced shoes, a big clay jar on his shoulder, and he has probably just filled the little jug on the ground. His open hand asks for payment, or perhaps a share of the pie. By the 19th century the picture was known as The Poor Black Boy, a title that cast him as the beggar. The seated boys are the barefoot ones in torn shirts. The one on the right covers the pie with his hand, and the one on the left grins out at us while he reaches into the water-seller's pocket for coins.