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

CC0 Public Domain Designation

c. 1805

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

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.

Status: On View, Gallery 161
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Joshua Johnson
Title: Elizabeth Grant Bankson Beatty (Mrs. James Beatty) and Her Daughter Susan
Place: Baltimore (Object made in)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: c. 1805
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 82.9 × 72.8 cm (32 5/8 × 28 5/8 in.)
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 Archie, Mr. and Mrs. Perry Herst, Jay W. McGreevy, Mr. and Mrs. John W. Puth, Stone Foundation, and Mr. and Mrs. Frederick G. Wacker, Jr. endowment funds; through prior acquisitions of the George F. Harding Collection and Ruth Helgeson
Reference Number: 1998.315
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/150054/manifest.json

Carolyn J. Weekley, ed., Joshua Johnson: Freeman and Early American Portrait Painter, exh. cat. (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1987), 116, cat. 20 (ill.).
Andrea D. Barnwell and Kirsten P. Buick, “A Portfolio of Works by African American Artists Continuing the Dialogue: A Work in Progress,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 24, no. 2 (1999): 185, as Mrs. Andrew Bedford Bankson and Son, Gunning Bedford Bankson, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4112968.
Andrew J. Walker, “Portfolio,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 24, no. 2 (1999): 189, cat. 1 (ill.), as Mrs. Andrew Bedford Bankson and Son, Gunning Bedford Bankson, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4112968.
Margaret Rose Vendryes, “Race Identity/ Identifying Race: Robert S. Duncanson and Nineteenth–Century American Painting, Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 27, no. 1 (2001), 82–99, fig. 3 (ill.), as Mrs. Andrew Bedford Bankson and Son, Gunning Bedford Bankson, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4102840.

Baltimore, Maryland Historical Society, Joshua Johnson: Freeman and Early American Portrait Painter, Sept. 26, 1987–Jan. 3, 1988, cat. 20; Williamsburg, VA, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, Jan. 17–May 15, 1988; New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, June 18–Aug. 25, 1988; Stamford, CT, Whitney Museum of American Art (branch), Sept. 9–Nov. 9, 1988.

Elizabeth Grant Bankson Beatty (1775–1851; previously Elizabeth Grant Bankson Wilmans) and James Beatty (1770–1851), Baltimore, MD; by descent through the family to Hugh Purviance King (1872–1966), Long Island City, NY, by 1966 [this and the following according to gallery invoice; copy in curatorial object file]; by descent to his daughter, Frances Cary Montgomery (1911–1988; born Frances King, also Mrs. Hugh C. Montgomery); by descent to private collection, Tennessee, by 1998; with Washburn Gallery, New York, by 1998 [incoming receipt, RX21976, May 21, 1998; copy in curatorial object file]; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1998.

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

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.