William Barksdale Myers was the only son of Richmond businessman and city councilman Gustavus Adolphus Myers and his wife, Anna Augusta Giles. William did have a half brother, nearly twenty years his senior, Richard Gustavus Forrester, the son of Gustavus and freedwoman Nelly Forrester, who would serve as one of the first African Americans on Richmond’s City Council after the Civil War.

William achieved the rank of major in the Confederate army and served on the staff of Major General John C. Breckinridge, about whom he reported in a letter to his father: “For the most part he is courteous, grandiose, not pompous, a sky rocket on the field, and as thoroughly selfish a man as ever God created.” Still, he reassured his father, though Breckinridge was “frequently petulant to others, he has always maintained the most courteous demeanor to me.”

In 1864, William married Martha West Pegram Paul and they had four children. William became a very promising painter in Richmond before his career was cut short by an untimely death at the age of thirty-three. In addition to this self-portrait, there are two portraits he painted of his father included in the Loeb Portrait Database.