Elizabeth Grant Bankson Beatty (Mrs. James Beatty) and Her Daughter Susan

Download1686 × 1933 px View on a wall Edit

Artist: Joshua Johnson (American, 1763–1825)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 82.9 × 72.8 cm (32 5/8 × 28 5/8 in.)
Museum: Art Institute of Chicago
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

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.

Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0.