Emma Van Name, ca. 1805, oil on canvas, 29" x 23".  Framed by Gill & Lagodich for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Period c. 1790s American painting frame; gilded wood with carved and applied ornament. Molding width: 3-1/8” "This compelling portrait of a Maryland toddler is widely regarded as an icon of American folk painting. Included in numerous international exhibitions since its discovery in the late 1950s by New York’s primary folk and modernist dealer, Edith Halpert, it is now accepted as an important work by Joshua Johnson, the earliest known professional African American painter. Son of a white man and an unidentified enslaved mother, Johnson apprenticed to a blacksmith before achieving his freedom in 1782, becoming part of Baltimore’s large free black population. Emma Van Name is arguably his most ambitious and engaging portrait of an individual child. Distinguished by a bravura demonstration of the presumably self-taught artist’s talent and imaginative flair in its nuanced palette, compositional complexity, deft handling of details, and surreally scaled goblet that incongruously comes to the subject’s waist, the work suggests the particular appeal of historical folk painting to early 20th-century modernists." —Metropolitan Museum permanent collection label.

Mrs. Andrew Bedford Bankson and Son, Gunning Bedford Bankson, 1803/1805, oil on canvas 38 x 32 in. Framed by Gill & Lagodich for the Art Institute of Chicago, period early 19th century American gilded wood scoop molding frame, molding width 3-1/2 inches. "Joshua Johnson was the nation’s first professional African American painter of prominence. Listed in the 1816 Baltimore city directory as a “free householder of Colour,” he was born into slavery and freed by his owner (and father) shortly after 1782. Through his ties to abolitionists, Johnson attracted local patrons from the city’s artisan and middle-class families, such as the Banksons. The emphasis on fashion in this painting is characteristic of much of Johnson’s portraiture. When permitted, the artist preferred to bedeck his female sitters with jewelry. Mrs. Bankson’s hair is bound with a double circlet of light glass beads that accentuates her brown hair and gray eyes. The child’s clothes are equally elegant; he sports a high-waisted, white-muslin gown and holds a brightly colored strawberry, a delicacy that Johnson often included in his portraits.” — AIC permanent collection label.