Joshua Johnson

Margera Brown Earnshaw, Prince George's County, Maryland (sister of the sitter)

Richard J. Earnshaw, Prince George's County, Maryland (acquired by descent from the above)

Mary Porter Earnshaw, Washington, D.C. (acquired by descent from the above)

Mary Porter Couden, Washington, D.C. (acquired by descent from the above)

Private Collection (acquired as a gift from the above by 1987)

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Baltimore, Maryland Historical Society; Williamsburg, Virginia, The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center and New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art (and traveling), Joshua Johnson: Freeman and Early American Portrait Painter, 1987-88, pp. 153-55, illustrated in color

Denise Smith, "Joshua Johnson Exhibit Opens at Historical Society," The Baltimore Afro-American, 26 September 1987, p. 6

David C. Driskell, The Other Side of Color: African American Art in the Collection of Camille O. and William H. Cosby, Jr, Rohnert Park, California, 2001, pl. 4, p. 13; p. 15, illustrated in color (spelled Joshua Johnston)

Regarding the present work, Carolyn J. Weekley and Stiles Tuttle Colwill noted, “This small, charming portrait by Joshua Johnson is one of only two that bear a full inscription, the other being the portrait of Sarah Ogden Gustin (Cat. No. 4). Perhaps we will never know the precise meaning of the date on this portrait, October 26, 1813, but it is believed to be the date of the painting’s execution since the child appears to be about seven or eight years old. As noted on page 00, the month is abbreviated in the traditional French form, a small but important clue in the gathering evidence that Johnson was probably of French descent” (Carolyn J. Weekley and Stiles Tuttle Colwill, Joshua Johnson: Freeman and Early American Portrait Painter, Baltimore, 1987-88, pp. 153). 

The sitter illustrated is the son of Basil D. Brown and his wife, Ruth Beall of Prince George’s County, Maryland. A member of a prominent family, young Basil is depicted in contemporary dress that departs from the lace- and cotton-collared garments seen in Johnson’s earlier portraits of children. His gold-and-black vest is crisply rendered, despite the characteristically flat modeling evident in this work and others from the artist’s later period. The quill pen held in his right hand likely functions as an emblem of literacy and education.