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Lot Essay
This stunning portrait of mother and child, identified as Mrs. Martha (Hall) Dorsey (1777-1842) and her daughter Mary Ann Dorsey (c. 1804-c.1855) is a captivating example of Joshua Johnson’s talent. Johnson (c. 1763-after 1824), known as America’s first professional African-American portrait painter, was highly sought-after amongst Baltimore’s most well-to-do families, as reflected in the present picture.
Dr. John Hall Pleasants, who first identified the artist in 1939, noted the hallmarks of his work in this picture and offered his praise of it/ “This is in every way typical of Joshua Johnston at his best…with his characteristic figures and features, pose, sofa with brass tacks, and the book and strawberry sprig accessories” (J. Hall Pleasants Research Files (The Frick Collection/Frick Art Reference Library Archives, 1949, no. 3113). Rendered in his distinctive delicate style, mother and child are depicted with Johnson’s trademark ovoid heads and almond-shaped eyes. Their tight and rather small mouths are delineated by thick strokes separating the lips. Upon close inspection, one can make out the faint graphite lines under the figures’ chins, a device that Johnson used to sketch out his sitters before a thin application of paint. He was very restrained with paint and used a wet-in-wet method when applying it, so there are no or very few layers. Many of his works, such as the present portrait, have a diaphanous quality because of this. Here, mother and child gaze out and the viewer immediately engages with the elegant and thoughtful composition. The young girl holds a strawberry sprig in her left hand, while tenderly touching her mother’s breast. Mother and child is a reoccurring composition for Johnson, but not as often does he depict the two figures embracing in this particular manner. He more frequently shows figures with a hand on another’s shoulder. A similar example to the present painting is of Mrs. James Wintkle and Her Daughter, Elizabeth Adelaid Wintkle (Private Collection), painted circa 1802-03, however the difference in rendering is remarkable. The earlier portrait is stiff and impersonable: the child’s hand awkwardly floats above her mother’s collarbone and Johnson crudely paints a hovering pointed finger, an attempt to communicate physical connection. The few years of additional practice awards Johnson great development in his skills. The relationship in the present portrait feels much more familiar. Johnson has created an extremely intimate moment, capturing the extraordinary bond between mother and daughter.
Johnson paints Mrs. Dorsey fashionably fitted in a simple, yet striking blue dress with a delicate lace collar. Her face is framed by loose curls pulled back by a comb and her ears are decorated with gold jewelry. The yellow seen here is repeated in the book that she holds, the child’s necklace, the curtain fringe, and the brass tacks of the sofa which they sit on. Johnson’s expert use of color creates a dynamic portrait and encourages one’s eye to travel. Sometimes referred to as the “brass tack artist,” Johnson often paints sofas with this embellishment. Here, he sits the figures on a sophisticated, black-upholstered sofa with a bowed back. Johnson’s slightly awkward attempt at perspective and depth is evident in his depiction of the cabriole arms which terminate in carved scrolls. Despite this, the composition is perfectly balanced; the shape of the sofa is mirrored by the swagged curtain and the few colors chosen are repeated throughout.
Even today, Joshua Johnson remains an enigmatic figure. Family histories and a listing as a “free coloured person” in the 1816/7 Baltimore City Directory indicated that he was African American but his background was unknown until the 1990s when newly discovered court records revealed his mixed-race heritage. The records include a 1764 bill of sale from William Wheeler to George Johnson (Johnston) for a “mulatto boy named Joshua” and a 1782 manumission order for Joshua Johnson that reveals his age at the time as “upwards of Nineteen Years” and that he was the son of his owner, George Johnson. In 1782, he was apprenticed to a blacksmith, but little is known of his life until 1796, when he is listed as a portrait painter in the Baltimore City Directory. Two years later, he placed his first advertisement, in which he noted that he was a “self-taught genius.” Scholarship has speculated over Johnson’s training as an artist and where he developed his painterly skills. Some argue that Johnson was taken in by the artist family of Charles Peale Polk (1767-1822) and Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) based on the shared stylistic qualities reflected in their work, and that they helped support and promote Johnson’s artistic career by introducing him to their wealthy patrons. Alternatively, it has been argued that Johnson developed his visual literacy by visiting Baltimore museums and his technique by possibly working as a furniture decorator to supplement his income (see Beatrix T. Rumford, American Folk Portraits: Paintings and Drawings from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center (Williamsburg, 1981), pp. 132-3). Additional advertisements and directories indicate his various addresses until 1824, after which there is no record of his life (Jennifer Bryan and Robert Torchia, “The Mysterious Portraitist Joshua Johnson,” Archives of American Art Journal, vol. 36, no. 2 (1996), pp. 2-7; Carolyn J. Weekley, “Who Was Joshua Johnson?” in Weekley and Stiles, op. cit., pp. 47-67).
Johnson’s career can be understood in three distinct periods. The first consists of works roughly created between 1796 and 1803. These portraits are characterized by a more crude rendering of figures and details, and a less skilled handling of brushwork. The second period, dating between 1803 and 1814, is Johnson’s most prolific and during which his portraits became more sophisticated, including the present portrait. The last period, between 1815 and his understood death of 1825, shows a slow in production and the works vary in quality of execution, possibly a reflection of age or failing health.
Never out of the family, this portrait is offered by lateral descendants of the sitters. According to family tradition and past scholarship, the sitters are identified as Martha (Hall) Dorsey (1777-before 1830) and her daughter Mary Ann (ca.1804-ca.1855). Martha was the daughter of William Murdoch Hall (1735-1792) and Ann Duckett Hall (1736-1834) of Prince George’s County, Maryland, and hailed from a prominent family established in Maryland in the late seventeenth century. In 1798, she married Joshua Dorsey (1776-1852), who like Martha, descended from early settlers of Maryland. By 1803, the couple were living in Baltimore where he is first listed in the Baltimore City Directory at 8 South Gay Street, and a year later, their daughter Mary Ann, was born. The family later lived on Pratt Street, where he is recorded as a merchant. As noted by Carolyn Weekley and Stiles Colwill, Martha appears to have died young as Joshua re-married a woman named Sarah; this may be Sarah Osborn, who appears in the documentary record as marrying a Joshua Dorsey in Baltimore County on May 30, 1818 (Weekley and Colwill, p. 123; Maryland, U.S., Compiled Marriages, 1655-1850, available at ancestry.com).
Weekley and Colwill also note the possibility that the sitters may be Martha’s sister-in-law, Mary Murrier (Wright) Dorsey (1775-1824) and her daughter, Harriet (1797-1862), direct ancestors of the portrait’s later owners; however, as the latter lived in Anne Arundel County rather than Baltimore, these authors conclude that Martha and Mary Ann are the more likely sitters. Further research supports this conclusion. Family documents include a letter written to Dr. J. Hall Pleasants, the first scholar to recognize Johnson’s body of work, documenting that this portrait descended together with a later portrait of a man, known by the family as “Dr. Dorsey” (letter, Kent R. Mullikin to Dr. Pleasants, 1949, family papers). This portrait may very well have been of Martha’s husband, Joshua Dorsey. Although previously a merchant in Baltimore, he appears to be the individual of the same name living in New York in 1850 with the occupation of “physician.” In his household at this time, are three younger Dorsey family members, most likely children from his second marriage, one of whom is named Louisa (b. ca. 1821). She may be the reason that the child in this portrait was mistakenly referred to as “Louise” when the portrait was included in a 1951 checklist (see Literature above).
Dr. John Hall Pleasants, who first identified the artist in 1939, noted the hallmarks of his work in this picture and offered his praise of it/ “This is in every way typical of Joshua Johnston at his best…with his characteristic figures and features, pose, sofa with brass tacks, and the book and strawberry sprig accessories” (J. Hall Pleasants Research Files (The Frick Collection/Frick Art Reference Library Archives, 1949, no. 3113). Rendered in his distinctive delicate style, mother and child are depicted with Johnson’s trademark ovoid heads and almond-shaped eyes. Their tight and rather small mouths are delineated by thick strokes separating the lips. Upon close inspection, one can make out the faint graphite lines under the figures’ chins, a device that Johnson used to sketch out his sitters before a thin application of paint. He was very restrained with paint and used a wet-in-wet method when applying it, so there are no or very few layers. Many of his works, such as the present portrait, have a diaphanous quality because of this. Here, mother and child gaze out and the viewer immediately engages with the elegant and thoughtful composition. The young girl holds a strawberry sprig in her left hand, while tenderly touching her mother’s breast. Mother and child is a reoccurring composition for Johnson, but not as often does he depict the two figures embracing in this particular manner. He more frequently shows figures with a hand on another’s shoulder. A similar example to the present painting is of Mrs. James Wintkle and Her Daughter, Elizabeth Adelaid Wintkle (Private Collection), painted circa 1802-03, however the difference in rendering is remarkable. The earlier portrait is stiff and impersonable: the child’s hand awkwardly floats above her mother’s collarbone and Johnson crudely paints a hovering pointed finger, an attempt to communicate physical connection. The few years of additional practice awards Johnson great development in his skills. The relationship in the present portrait feels much more familiar. Johnson has created an extremely intimate moment, capturing the extraordinary bond between mother and daughter.
Johnson paints Mrs. Dorsey fashionably fitted in a simple, yet striking blue dress with a delicate lace collar. Her face is framed by loose curls pulled back by a comb and her ears are decorated with gold jewelry. The yellow seen here is repeated in the book that she holds, the child’s necklace, the curtain fringe, and the brass tacks of the sofa which they sit on. Johnson’s expert use of color creates a dynamic portrait and encourages one’s eye to travel. Sometimes referred to as the “brass tack artist,” Johnson often paints sofas with this embellishment. Here, he sits the figures on a sophisticated, black-upholstered sofa with a bowed back. Johnson’s slightly awkward attempt at perspective and depth is evident in his depiction of the cabriole arms which terminate in carved scrolls. Despite this, the composition is perfectly balanced; the shape of the sofa is mirrored by the swagged curtain and the few colors chosen are repeated throughout.
Even today, Joshua Johnson remains an enigmatic figure. Family histories and a listing as a “free coloured person” in the 1816/7 Baltimore City Directory indicated that he was African American but his background was unknown until the 1990s when newly discovered court records revealed his mixed-race heritage. The records include a 1764 bill of sale from William Wheeler to George Johnson (Johnston) for a “mulatto boy named Joshua” and a 1782 manumission order for Joshua Johnson that reveals his age at the time as “upwards of Nineteen Years” and that he was the son of his owner, George Johnson. In 1782, he was apprenticed to a blacksmith, but little is known of his life until 1796, when he is listed as a portrait painter in the Baltimore City Directory. Two years later, he placed his first advertisement, in which he noted that he was a “self-taught genius.” Scholarship has speculated over Johnson’s training as an artist and where he developed his painterly skills. Some argue that Johnson was taken in by the artist family of Charles Peale Polk (1767-1822) and Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) based on the shared stylistic qualities reflected in their work, and that they helped support and promote Johnson’s artistic career by introducing him to their wealthy patrons. Alternatively, it has been argued that Johnson developed his visual literacy by visiting Baltimore museums and his technique by possibly working as a furniture decorator to supplement his income (see Beatrix T. Rumford, American Folk Portraits: Paintings and Drawings from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center (Williamsburg, 1981), pp. 132-3). Additional advertisements and directories indicate his various addresses until 1824, after which there is no record of his life (Jennifer Bryan and Robert Torchia, “The Mysterious Portraitist Joshua Johnson,” Archives of American Art Journal, vol. 36, no. 2 (1996), pp. 2-7; Carolyn J. Weekley, “Who Was Joshua Johnson?” in Weekley and Stiles, op. cit., pp. 47-67).
Johnson’s career can be understood in three distinct periods. The first consists of works roughly created between 1796 and 1803. These portraits are characterized by a more crude rendering of figures and details, and a less skilled handling of brushwork. The second period, dating between 1803 and 1814, is Johnson’s most prolific and during which his portraits became more sophisticated, including the present portrait. The last period, between 1815 and his understood death of 1825, shows a slow in production and the works vary in quality of execution, possibly a reflection of age or failing health.
Never out of the family, this portrait is offered by lateral descendants of the sitters. According to family tradition and past scholarship, the sitters are identified as Martha (Hall) Dorsey (1777-before 1830) and her daughter Mary Ann (ca.1804-ca.1855). Martha was the daughter of William Murdoch Hall (1735-1792) and Ann Duckett Hall (1736-1834) of Prince George’s County, Maryland, and hailed from a prominent family established in Maryland in the late seventeenth century. In 1798, she married Joshua Dorsey (1776-1852), who like Martha, descended from early settlers of Maryland. By 1803, the couple were living in Baltimore where he is first listed in the Baltimore City Directory at 8 South Gay Street, and a year later, their daughter Mary Ann, was born. The family later lived on Pratt Street, where he is recorded as a merchant. As noted by Carolyn Weekley and Stiles Colwill, Martha appears to have died young as Joshua re-married a woman named Sarah; this may be Sarah Osborn, who appears in the documentary record as marrying a Joshua Dorsey in Baltimore County on May 30, 1818 (Weekley and Colwill, p. 123; Maryland, U.S., Compiled Marriages, 1655-1850, available at ancestry.com).
Weekley and Colwill also note the possibility that the sitters may be Martha’s sister-in-law, Mary Murrier (Wright) Dorsey (1775-1824) and her daughter, Harriet (1797-1862), direct ancestors of the portrait’s later owners; however, as the latter lived in Anne Arundel County rather than Baltimore, these authors conclude that Martha and Mary Ann are the more likely sitters. Further research supports this conclusion. Family documents include a letter written to Dr. J. Hall Pleasants, the first scholar to recognize Johnson’s body of work, documenting that this portrait descended together with a later portrait of a man, known by the family as “Dr. Dorsey” (letter, Kent R. Mullikin to Dr. Pleasants, 1949, family papers). This portrait may very well have been of Martha’s husband, Joshua Dorsey. Although previously a merchant in Baltimore, he appears to be the individual of the same name living in New York in 1850 with the occupation of “physician.” In his household at this time, are three younger Dorsey family members, most likely children from his second marriage, one of whom is named Louisa (b. ca. 1821). She may be the reason that the child in this portrait was mistakenly referred to as “Louise” when the portrait was included in a 1951 checklist (see Literature above).