Probably Maria McNeal [later, Mrs. Benoni Wheat/ Mrs. James Gardner] (1816-1894)
Dateca. 1818
Attributed to
Joshua Johnson (active ca. 1800-ca. 1824)
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsOH: 32 1/2 in.; OW: 26 3/4 in.; Unframed: OH: 28 in.; OW: 23 1/2 in.
Credit LineGift of Mr. and Mrs. Thomson Lipscomb
Object number2017.100.4,A&B
DescriptionPortrait of a young girl, likely a toddler, in a blue dress with red shoes. She is shown holding a strawberry in her right hand and pointing to a large basket of strawberries with her left. A grey drape with yellow fringe take up a large portion of the dark background.Label TextOne of the first Black person known to have made a career for himself as an artist, Joshua Johnson worked in the Baltimore area from around 1795 until 1825. In an early advertisement, placed in the Baltimore Intelligencer, Johnson described himself as a “self-taught” genius and with over 80 surviving works is it easy to ascertain that he was well respected by his Baltimore clientele.
Johnson painted Maria McNeal with a basket of strawberries when she was about 2 years old. Maria was born in Wilmington, Delaware but while she was still an infant her family relocated to Baltimore, where her father Roger McNeal worked as a mail stage driver. A prized possession, the portrait descended through the Smoot family of Alexandria until it was given to Colonial Williamsburg in 2017.
ProvenancePortrait descended in the family of the sitter to Susana Smoot; to her daughter, Susan Ann Smoot Thomson; to her daughter, Susan Smoot Thomson Lipscomb; to her son, Thomson Lipscomb who donated the piece to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in 2017.
Exhibition(s)
ca. 1845
1733 (dated)
