[1] The painting shows the enslaved Afro-Creole teenager Bélizaire together with the three children of the wealthy German-born New Orleans merchant, financier, and possible diplomat Frederick or Frédéric Frey.

According to one family story, Frédéric Frey became angry with Bélizaire, sold him, and had him painted out of the portrait.

His widow, Marie Colette Coralie Favre D'aunoy Frey, later sold Bélizaire for $1,200 to sugar planter Lézin Becnel in 1857 to be enslaved on the Evergreen Plantation.

Records show that Bélizaire was sold at least three times, but survived to be emancipated at the end of the American Civil War.

[15] Contemporary researchers believe a Frey family descendant had the figure painted out around the turn of the 20th century.

[16]) Simien also commissioned the historian Katy Morlas Shannon to research Bélizaire's identity and history, thus recovering his name and year of birth which was previously unrecorded in the museum documentation.

[2] The painting is the "first naturalistic portrait of a named Black subject set in a Southern landscape" in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum.

[3] Its display is part of a national trend in museums and Southern historic sites to "address their history of slavery and how ... wealth was accumulated".