Room 225
African American Painting of the 19th Century
1800–1918, USA, France, Portraiture, Hudson River School and Realism
Joshua Johnson, born the son of an enslaved woman and freed in 1782, is the first known African American professional painter; in Baltimore he painted portraits of families. Robert S. Duncanson painted landscapes and still lifes in Cincinnati, and Edward M. Bannister won a medal at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. Henry O. Tanner became famous in Paris – the first African American painter with an international reputation.