Art Institute of Chicago

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

Joshua Johnson (American, c. 1763–after 1825)

Date

c. 1805

Medium

Oil on canvas

Culture

Baltimore

Department

Arts of the Americas

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

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.

The authoritative record is held by Art Institute of Chicago. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.