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Accession #	1993.82
Artist	Joshua Johnson
Title	John Jacob Anderson and Sons, John and Edward
Date	ca. 1812-1815
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	30 1/8 x 39 11/16 in. (76.5 x 100.8 cm) frame: 37 x 46 1/2 x 3 1/8 in. (94 x 118.1 x 7.9 cm)
Credit Line	Dick S. Ramsay Fund and Mary Smith Dorward Fund
Location	American Identities: Art Making / Centennial Era

Curatorial Remarks: Joshua Johnson had a talent for the tender delineation of family ties. Here, each of the young boys extends an arm to their father and rests a pale hand on his sturdy form. Their father’s hand, open in his lap, suggests a gentle accessibility.

Johnson was born into slavery. The son of a white man and an enslaved African American woman, he was freed by his father in 1782. By the end of the eighteenth century, he was a successful portraitist in the racially tolerant environment of Baltimore, where one-fifth of the population was Black and one-quarter of all Black residents were free.