Seated Girl with Strawberries

A rare instance of Joshua Johnson portraying a child in a sitting position, this portrait of a girl contains several props favored by the artist. As discussed in the previous lot, the rendering of the facial features and hands, along with the girl’s red shoes and the flowering bush, illustrate Johnson’s distinctive style and more specifically his known practices from the years c.1803 to 1805. Here, the girl holds a strawberry in a half-raised right arm, a pose Johnson used in several other portraits including those of Mrs. Andrew Bedford Bankson and Son, Gunning Bedford Bankson and Emma Van Name, while her left arm cradles a basket of strawberries, as seen in a portrait of the McCormick family, all of which are dated to the same period (Carolyn J. Weekley, Stiles Tuttle Colwill et al., Joshua Johnson: Freeman and Early American Portrait Painter (Williamsburg, VA and Baltimore, 1987), pp. 116, 123-124, 127-129, cats. 20, 28, 32). Furthermore, the meticulously painted upholstered stool illustrates why Johnson was known as the “brass tack artist” before his identity was discovered in 1939. For more on Joshua Johnson and the family history of the portrait, see essay for the previous lot.