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Joshua Johnson American, born c. 1763, active 1796 - 1824 The Westwood Children, c. 1807 oil on canvas overall: 104.5 x 117 cm (41 1/8 x 46 1/16 in.) Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch 1959.11.1 |
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The Westwood Children depicts the young sons of John and Margaret Lorman Westwood. A successful stagecoach manufacturer in Baltimore's early Federal society, Westwood was able to commission this portrait from Joshua Johnson, one of the leading painters in town, at the very height of his career. Johnson was one of the first African Americans to become a professional artist in America. Born into slavery around 1763, as the son of a white man and a black woman who was the slave of another man, Johnson was purchased by his father from his mother's owner when he was about a year old. He later apprenticed to a Baltimore blacksmith, and was freed in 1782. Apparently self-taught, Johnson was listed as a portrait painter or limner from 1796 to 1824 in Baltimore city directories. Some eighty portraits are now attributed to him.
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