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拍品专文
This refined portrait of an elegant and distinguished woman exemplifies the talent of Joshua Johnson. Johnson (c. 1763–after 1824), regarded as America’s first professional African American portrait painter, was highly sought-after amongst Baltimore’s most prominent families. Although the sitter remains unidentified, she was likely a member of Maryland’s elite society. Johnson presents her in a proper and dignified pose, characteristic of his portraits of well-to-do Baltimore women. The sitter displays Johnson’s hallmark features: an ovoid head, almond-shaped eyes, and pursed lips. Recently offered at auction as the work of an unidentified artist, the portrait is rendered in Johnson’s distinctive and delicate style, supporting its attribution and marking it as an exciting discovery.
Johnson worked with remarkable restraint, employing a wet-in-wet technique that resulted in very thin paint layers. Many of his portraits, including the present work, possess a diaphanous, almost luminous quality because of this approach, most evident in his exquisite handling of lace. Here, the sitter wears a simple yet striking dark brown dress accented with a fine lace blouse and delicate sleeves. Her bonnet, adorned with a simplified floral motif and tied with a bow, enhances her understated elegance. Another portrait by Johnson depicting a woman with a similar bonnet is of Mary Anne Jewins Burnett (Mrs. Charles Burnett) in the collection of the Maryland Center for History and Culture (accession no. 2002.1.2). In the present portrait, Johnson sets the sitter against a simple dark background, she becomes the focal point. Her features and dress are rendered with an airiness and refinement reflective of Johnson’s artistry. He achieves a transparency and delicacy seldom seen in non-academic portraiture.
Despite his growing recognition today, Johnson remains an enigmatic figure. Long thought to be African American based on family histories and his listing as a “free coloured person” in the 1816⁄17 Baltimore City Directory, his background remained unclear until the 1990s. Newly uncovered court documents revealed his mixed-race heritage, including a 1764 bill of sale transferring a “mulatto boy named Joshua” from William Wheeler to George Johnson (Johnston), and a 1782 manumission order stating that Joshua, then “upwards of Nineteen Years”, was the son of his owner, George Johnson. Apprenticed to a blacksmith in 1782, Johnson is not again recorded until 1796, when he is listed as a portrait painter in the Baltimore City Directory. Two years later, he placed his first advertisement, describing himself as a “self-taught genius.”
Scholarship has debated Johnson’s artistic training and the origins of his painterly skill. Some propose that he may have been taken in or mentored by members of the Peale family, Charles Peale Polk (1767–1822) and Charles Willson Peale (1741–1827), given shared stylistic qualities in their work and the Peales’ connections to affluent patrons who might have supported Johnson’s career. Others suggest that he cultivated his visual literacy through local Baltimore museums and developed his technique while working as a furniture decorator to supplement his income (see Beatrix T. Rumford, American Folk Portraits: Paintings and Drawings from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center (Williamsburg, 1981), pp. 132–33). Additional advertisements and city directory entries trace his whereabouts through 1824, after which his life disappears from documentation (Jennifer Bryan and Robert Torchia, “The Mysterious Portraitist Joshua Johnson,” Archives of American Art Journal, vol. 36, no. 2 (1996), pp. 2–7; Carolyn J. Weekley, “Who Was Joshua Johnson?” in Weekley and Stiles, op. cit., pp. 47–67).
Johnson worked with remarkable restraint, employing a wet-in-wet technique that resulted in very thin paint layers. Many of his portraits, including the present work, possess a diaphanous, almost luminous quality because of this approach, most evident in his exquisite handling of lace. Here, the sitter wears a simple yet striking dark brown dress accented with a fine lace blouse and delicate sleeves. Her bonnet, adorned with a simplified floral motif and tied with a bow, enhances her understated elegance. Another portrait by Johnson depicting a woman with a similar bonnet is of Mary Anne Jewins Burnett (Mrs. Charles Burnett) in the collection of the Maryland Center for History and Culture (accession no. 2002.1.2). In the present portrait, Johnson sets the sitter against a simple dark background, she becomes the focal point. Her features and dress are rendered with an airiness and refinement reflective of Johnson’s artistry. He achieves a transparency and delicacy seldom seen in non-academic portraiture.
Despite his growing recognition today, Johnson remains an enigmatic figure. Long thought to be African American based on family histories and his listing as a “free coloured person” in the 1816⁄17 Baltimore City Directory, his background remained unclear until the 1990s. Newly uncovered court documents revealed his mixed-race heritage, including a 1764 bill of sale transferring a “mulatto boy named Joshua” from William Wheeler to George Johnson (Johnston), and a 1782 manumission order stating that Joshua, then “upwards of Nineteen Years”, was the son of his owner, George Johnson. Apprenticed to a blacksmith in 1782, Johnson is not again recorded until 1796, when he is listed as a portrait painter in the Baltimore City Directory. Two years later, he placed his first advertisement, describing himself as a “self-taught genius.”
Scholarship has debated Johnson’s artistic training and the origins of his painterly skill. Some propose that he may have been taken in or mentored by members of the Peale family, Charles Peale Polk (1767–1822) and Charles Willson Peale (1741–1827), given shared stylistic qualities in their work and the Peales’ connections to affluent patrons who might have supported Johnson’s career. Others suggest that he cultivated his visual literacy through local Baltimore museums and developed his technique while working as a furniture decorator to supplement his income (see Beatrix T. Rumford, American Folk Portraits: Paintings and Drawings from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center (Williamsburg, 1981), pp. 132–33). Additional advertisements and city directory entries trace his whereabouts through 1824, after which his life disappears from documentation (Jennifer Bryan and Robert Torchia, “The Mysterious Portraitist Joshua Johnson,” Archives of American Art Journal, vol. 36, no. 2 (1996), pp. 2–7; Carolyn J. Weekley, “Who Was Joshua Johnson?” in Weekley and Stiles, op. cit., pp. 47–67).