Elizabeth Grant Bankson Beatty (Mrs. James Beatty) and Her Daughter Susan
Joshua Johnson (American, c. 1763–after 1825)
c. 1805
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 82.9 × 72.8 cm (32 5/8 × 28 5/8 in.)
- Culture
- Baltimore
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of the Americas
- Credit line
- 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…
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
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.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
