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

Portrait of a light-skinned woman with dark curly hair and to her right a small, blond child. Both are elegantly dressed, the woman in a dark, short-sleeved dress with gathered bodice and the child in a short-sleeved white dress. A white tassel hangs down above the child from a nearby curtain.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

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  • Portrait of a light-skinned woman with dark curly hair and to her right a small, blond child. Both are elegantly dressed, the woman in a dark, short-sleeved dress with gathered bodice and the child in a short-sleeved white dress. A white tassel hangs down above the child from a nearby curtain.

Date:

c. 1805

Artist:

Joshua Johnson
American, c. 1763–after 1825

About this artwork

Joshua Johnson was the first known African American 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 for his portraits from the city’s artisan and middle-class families.

Elizabeth Beatty is fashionably dressed, 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 Johnson’s portraits.

Status

On View, Gallery 169

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

81.3 × 71.1 cm (38 × 32 in.)

Credit Line

Purchased with funds provided by Robin and Tim Reynolds and Jill Burnside Zeno; Bulley and Andrews, Edna Graham, Love Galleries, Mrs. Eric 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

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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