Joshua Johnson (American, c. 1763–after 1825)
Elizabeth Grant Bankson Beatty (Mrs. James Beatty) and Her Daughter Susan
INV-1500
Joshua Johnson (American, c. 1763–after 1825)c. 1805
Elizabeth Grant Bankson Beatty (Mrs. James Beatty) and Her Daughter Susan
Joshua Johnson (American, c. 1763–after 1825) →paintingamerican arts
Date
c. 1805
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
82.9 × 72.8 cm (32 5/8 × 28 5/8 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Purchased with funds provided by Robin and Timm R. Reynolds and Jill Burnside Zeno; Bulley and Andrews, Edna Graham, Love Galleries, Mary Swissler Oldberg, Ratcliffe Foundation, and Quinn E. Delaney funds; Walter Aitken, Dr. Julian Archie, Mr. and Mrs. Perry Herst, Jay W. McGreevy, Mr. and Mrs. John W. Puth, Stone Foundation, and Mr. and Mrs. Frederick G. Wacker, Jr. endowment funds; through prior acquisitions of the George F. Harding Collection and Ruth Helgeson
Joshua Johnson portrayed his fashionably dressed sitter Elizabeth Beatty wearing a circlet of glass beads that accentuates her brown hair and gray eyes. The child’s clothes are equally elegant: she sports a high-waisted, white-muslin gown and holds a brightly colored strawberry, a delicacy often featured in the artist’s portraits. Johnson was the first known Black painter to gain professional recognition in the United States. Listed in the 1816 Baltimore city directory as a “free householder of Colour,” he had been freed by his enslaver (and father) around 1782 after apprenticing as a blacksmith. Described as “self-taught” in a newspaper advertisement, Johnson attracted local patrons among the city’s artisan and middle-class families.