Edward and Sarah Rutter

Joshua Johnson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art