Joshua Johnson
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Joshua Johnson (c.1763–1832) was the first African American painter to make his living by painting.
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[edit] Biography
Johnson was apparently self trained in his art. During a thirty year period of activity from 1795 to 1825 he produced many paintings with Baltimore related subject matter, including commissioned portraits of local merchants, ship captains and shopkeepers. No other artist in Maryland painted as many portraits of children and their parents during this period. More is known about the people Johnson painted than about the artist himself, and few clues survive to help piece together the identity and life of Joshua Johnson. Such lack of documentation was common among America’s free African American community of that time.
At the time, Baltimore had a large free African American population; in 1810, free blacks outnumbered enslaved individuals two to one. The Maryland Historical Society owns a record dated 1782 which documents Joshua’s freedom at age 20. It is not clear whether the Joshua Johnson of this record, identified as an apprentice blacksmith, is the same Joshua Johnson marked as a painter in the later 1796 record. Census records show that Johnson moved frequently through Baltimore and its Fells Point neighborhood. He may have been owned by a painter as a house servant during his youth.
[edit] Artistry
Scholar J. Hall Pleasants describes Johnson’s style as characteristically rigid in the treatment of hands, feet, arms and legs. Subjects in his works are often shown in three quarter view, holding objects such as a book or letter, riding crop, basket, parasol, pencil, sextant, fruit or cake. He frequently depicts settees with brass tacks, and shows a preference for dark and somber backgrounds, sometimes with red or dark curtains. Pleasants has noted a similarity between Johnson's work and that of the Peale-Polk family of portraitists. Like the paintings of the Peale-Polk family, Johnson's are well-executed works in a hard and linear style. Charles Peale Polk's work is the most similar to Johnson's; both artists handle arms and legs stiffly, their works are similarly two dimensional in effect, and both apply paint sparingly, Pleasants notes. Historical Maryland documents suggest that Johnson served as a slave in the Peale-Polk household for a period of time, before becoming a Free Man of Color (FMC). In fact, it is likely that Charles Peale Polk taught Johnson basic painting skills.
[edit] The Westwood Children
In his painting, The Westwood Children (now in the National Gallery of Art), Johnson depicts the male children of Margaret and John Westwood, who was a successful Baltimore stagecoach manufacturer. The painting is stylized and depicts the three children holding flowers in their hands, accompanied by the family dog which holds a bird in its mouth. The children have chilled expressionless stares, although the youngest child seems to be on the verge of smiling. Johnson was not entirely successful in creating a compositional balance between the children, positioned at the left, and their black dog and an alcove on the right.
[edit] References
- Joshua Johnson. Maryland ArtSource. Retrieved 2004-05-15
- Joshua Johnson: Freeman and Early American Painter. Maryland Historical Society. Retrieved 2004-05-15
- The Westwood Children. The National Gallery of Art. Retrieved 2004-05-15
