Joshua Johnson: Rediscovering America's First Black Professional Artist

Joshua Johnson, born into slavery around 1763 near Baltimore, Maryland, became the United States' first Black professional artist. His father George Johnson purchased him in 1764 and granted manumission in 1782. Johnson's work was rediscovered in the late 1930s by art historian J. Hall Pleasants, with further details emerging from the Maryland Historical Society in the mid-1990s. Listed as a painter in Baltimore's 1796 city directory, Johnson advertised himself as a self-taught genius in the Baltimore Intelligencer in 1798. Specializing in portraits of Maryland's upper class, his 83 attributed works show evolving skill with meticulous details like lace and fabric. Only two portraits depict Black subjects: Abner Coker and likely Daniel Coker, both ministers in Baltimore's free Black community. His subjects included slave owners like John Moale, who presided over Johnson's manumission. Johnson's paintings provide insight into early American society decades before slavery's abolition.