MS01.01.03 - Box 02 - Folder 10 - Cultural History Research Inc. - Papers, 1963

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[strikethrough: a part of] the architecture, textiles and ^ [in] body adornment, ^ [an art form which many involve painting parts of the body or causing blister like patterns to be created by incising the skin among] most African peoples. Whatever may have been the skills among artisans that centered around the limited use of the painterly or two-dimensional approach to art in the African tradition were lost during the cruel period of slavery when our ancestors were forced to give up nearly all of their cultural associations with Africa. Some visual forms emerged from this mixture of African , [strikethrough: and] European and native American culture ^ [that have been attributed to mulattoes.] It is in this context that one is made aware of the skills of the black artisan class who "redirected the passage of an African iconography in art into one which became serviceably oriented to Colonial America." 12

The black artisan contributed experience, time and heritable interest to the development of the crafts in America but he was never fully accepted and integrated into the mainstream of the crafts or ^ [into] what was the most important industry in ^ [colonial] America outside of agriculture. He remained a servant of the people even in his newly earned capacity as freedman since the growth of his profession was dependent almost entirely upon the needs of whites whose humanistic interest in people of African origin at best was one based in [strikethrough: his] them ability to serve ^ [them] as [strikethrough: a] laborers.

Black poets, musicians and craftsmen were acknowledged in what may be referred to as the more liberal literature of the colonial period; but few accounts of the lives of ^ [black] artists whose work has been ^ [well] documented [strikethrough: who served in] [strikethrough: a capacity of apprenticeship] in the fine arts have come to our attention prior to the life of Joshua Johnston.

Johnston is believed to have been a former slave from ^ [the city of] Baltimore where he entered the field of portrait painting. To this day, the question of his place

12 Ibid. p. 42-43.

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of birth is unsettled [strikethrough: nor] and so is the matter [strikethrough: clear as] pertaining to whom he actually belonged [strikethrough: as a] while he was a slave. His work was sought after by many Eastern Shore merchants who wanted family portraits painted. But Johnston's development as a skilled limner was not an ordinary occurrence for a slave artist. His sensitive interpretation of his subjects gives one to believe that he may have been trained by the better academicians of the day. Little is still know of how he acquired the skills he exercised when painting portraits of wealthy subjects such as The McCormick Family ^ [Figute no. -] and Young Lady On A Red Sofa. See plate number ______.

His work bears a close resemblance in ^ [its] design and stylistic format to that of James and Charles Willson Peale. One writer infers that the Peale brothers were Johnston's teachers. Dr. J. Hall Pleasants, whose painstaking studies of the work of Joshua Johnston in the decade of the 30's ^ [first brought the Artist to public attention] wrote of Johnston:

"A nebulous figure, a Negro painter of considerable ability with a style peculiarly his own, was a limner of portraits in Baltimore during the last decade of the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth. As far as can be learned about Joshua Johnston, or Johnson, was the first individual in the United States with Negro blood to win for himself a place as a portrait painter.

There is a persistent tradition passed down in the families of several subjects painted by Johnston that the painter was a slave owned by a forebear. But these traditions are curiously conflicting, for each of the present, or recent, possessors of Baltimorean, contemporary but unrelated one to the other. That Johnston passed from one owner to the other in such a summary fashion seems incredible.

As a matter of fact, from the time he appears as a portrait painter in the Baltimore directory for 1796, down to his last appearance in the directory for 1824, Johnston was not a slave at all, for slaves were not listed in directories. Moreover, in at least two listings his is specifically styled as a freeman." 13

13 Pleasants, J. Hall, "An Exhibition of Portraits by Joshua Johnston", The Peale Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, January 11-February 8, 1948.

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Johnston's fame as a portrait artist was well known in the states of Maryland and Virginia and based on the [strikethrough: patronage he portrayed] works that have been discovered, the whole of his subjects, excluding two known portraits of Blacks, were of whites. At the present time, only about thirty such works have been attributed to Johnston yet, it seems ^ [un]likely that he painted such a small number of works during the known period of his practice [strikethrough: in the city of Baltimore.] from 1796 to 1824. Johnston bought an advertisement in the Baltimore Intelligence which appeared December 19, 1798, attempting to promote his profession. [strikethrough: His ad read:] I read accordingly:

"Portrait Painting . . . as a self-taught genius deriving from nature and industry his knowledge of the Art . . . experienced many unsuperable in the pursuit of his studies it is highly gratifying to him to make assurances of his ability to execute all commands, with an effect, and in a style, which must give satisfaction. Apply at his House, in the ally leading from Charles Street to hanover Street, back of Sear's Tavern." 14

His reference in the ad to having . . . "experienced many unsuperable obstacles in the pursuit of his studies . . ." no doubt refers to his having overcome the problem of not being accepted as an artist because of his color. That he did achieved a measure of success ^ [as a portrait painter,] which signalled a form mof acceptance of his craft, went unnoticed by art historians and critics slightly more than 100 years after his death.

On entering the new era of artistic expression which showed the transition from slave craftsman to amateur artist. The black artist was thus treading on an even more unwelcomed path than he had followed in the area of the crafts. That the intellectual ability to perform in the arena of the plastic and graphic arts was always prevelent among black ^ [artists was] evidenced in the graphic works in the

14 Baltimore Intelligence, Baltimore, Mayland, December 19, 1798.

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In the years ahead, ^ [Patrick Reason] Robert S. Duncanson, Edward Mitchell Bannister, [strikethrough: Robert Douglas, Jr.] [strikethrough: and Patrick Reason would surface] Edmonia[?] Lewis and Henry O. Tanner were to come to the attention of the American public as artists who [strikethrough: were] like Joshua Johnston, were destined to forsake the crafts tradition and present themselves as fine artists working as painters, [strikethrough: and] engravers and sculptors with [strikethrough: some] a measure of acceptance within the [strikethrough: within[?] the art establishment.] mainstream of ^ [the] prevailing styles in American art. However, of all of the black artists ^ [of the early years of the 19th century] whose careers have come to our attention, none was no actively engaged in [strikethrough: the development] using his art to support anti-slavery activity [strikethrough: work] as was Patrick H. Reason whose engravings and lithographs were used widely in support abolitionist causes. Reason's apprenticeship in the art of engraving took place while he was [strikethrough: just[?]] still in [strikethrough: a] [?]. He became sensitively aware of the problem of slavery in American society and the inhumane conditions that accompanied this great travesty of justice [strikethrough: among] within the Black race [strikethrough: in America]. But he was equally sensitive to the denial of the rights of ^ [Black] women and showed his ^ [deep] concern for this problem by engraving, by [strikethrough: the] stipple [strikethrough: process] method, as early as 1835, this celebrated work.

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"AM I NOT A WOMAN AND A SISTER". [strikethrough: as early as 1835.] The extent to ^ [which his] artistry grew beyond mere illustration and [strikethrough: just] traditional portraiture may never be known since his career ^ [in the arts] cannot be documented beyond the middle of the nineteenth century. Racial types were ^ [not] uncommon among Reason's portraits. One such work which is house in [strikethrough: the Reason's portrait the] the Mooreland's [strikethrough: Collection of the] Negro Collection Founders Library at Howard University, has [strikethrough: shows a portrait] as its subject [strikethrough: [?]] a handsomely modelled portrait of Henry Bibb, [strikethrough: standing] a well dressed young writer [strikethrough: man] ^ [of 33 years of age] who ^ [whose book on the subject] [strikethrough: must have been] [strikethrough: approximately] of the American Slave had been well [strikethrough: years old] received when he sat for [strikethrough: Reason] the artist. Reason's work shows that he, like Jules Lion and Robert S. Duncanson, was also familiar with the work of the [strikethrough: newly introduced] camera which had only recently been [strikethrough: introduced in] brought to the United [strikethrough: America] States from Europe. More recently, a portrait of the ^ [famous] abolitionist, John Brown, [strikethrough: was] has been attributed to the [strikethrough: Reasons Portrait] artist, thus leading one to believe that Patrick Reason may have executed a body of work that has not yet been discovered.

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