Joshua Johnson

Joshua Johnson painted the families of Baltimore around 1800, and he is one of the earliest African American painters whose work survives. His pictures have a direct, slightly formal charm: sitters posed stiffly, faces carefully drawn, and details like brass upholstery tacks on sofas, swagged curtains and small objects held in children’s hands.

He was the son of a white father and an enslaved mother, and gained his freedom in 1782. Largely self taught, he advertised as a portrait painter in Baltimore from 1796. He often painted groups, a mother with her daughters or several children together, which was unusual at the time. His work is in the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In Grace Allison McCurdy and her Daughters, notice the matching dresses and the careful, doll like faces that make his style easy to recognise.