BENJAMIN FRANKLIN YOE AND SON

Joshua Johnson (or Johnston), the country’s first professional African American artist, painted in Baltimore from the late 1790s until he left the city in 1824. Johnson was the mulatto son of George Johnson, who purchased his freedom after Joshua finished an apprenticeship as a blacksmith. Joshua Johnson chose, instead, to work as a portraitist, and now more than eighty portraits have been attributed to him. Most of his sitters, such as Benjamin Franklin Yoe were, like Johnson, members of the artisan class. Both this portrait and its companion portrait of Yoe's wife and daughter, also in the MESDA collection, demonstrate Johnson's style – a rather flat handling of form but great expressiveness in the use of pose, setting, and accessories. Particularly expressive are his many portraits of or including children. Some have suggested that Charles Peale Polk (1767-1822) may have helped train Joshua Johnson. There is nothing to support this supposition other than a stylistic affinity. Johnson advertised himself as a "self-taught genius."