Day 7 - Free to paint

 January 7, 2025  I'm still in Puerto Rico and enjoying the sun and sea very much.  Unfortunately, I'm not doing a great job of keeping up with this  - so I'm a little worried about how this bodes for the project.  Nevertheless, I really have enjoyed learning a bit more about the paintings and painters from each day!

Joshua Johnson, the painter who painted today's picture is "the first known African American artist to earn is living as a professional portrait painter."

His painting, Edward and Sarah Rutter, painted circa 1805 now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The museum says this about this work:

Johnson, born to an enslaved woman and a White man, is the first known African American artist to earn his living as a professional portrait painter. He worked in Baltimore from about 1789 to 1825, painting likenesses of diverse sea captains, shopkeepers, as well as merchants and their families. In this depiction of Edward Pennington and Sarah Ann Rutter, children of Captain Joshua and Mary Pennington Rutter, Johnson demonstrated his affinity for strong colors and precise detail. Such work held particular appeal for early twentieth-century American modernists, who found in it a directness of expression that informed their own art. (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11269)

Johnson, who was born into slavery, and was conceived of a White slave owner and his slave, gained his freedom at the age of 19. 

Free, I paint and live
able to earn as I want
my name almost lost