Joshua Johnson, Painter

The War of 1812

There is also a great summary of the Pleasants article in Six Black Masters of American Art by Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson from 1972. The authors offer interesting conjectures on how the war of 1812 affected Johnson as a free man of color in Baltimore. The authors place Johnson into a larger historical narrative about Johnson, the British, and Francis Scott Key . On page 17 we find the musings “The British bombardment failed and Key’s verses later became famous as The Star Spangled Banner. They were immediately printed on leaflets in Baltimore, and Joshua Johnston may very well have carried copies home to his family.”

Bearden and Henderson use the war to point out that the popularity of portraiture increases afterwards and a thriving market was present. This chapter has a historical fiction tone that is accessible yet well-researched and informative. It engages the reader by bringing them into Johnson’s world and allowing them to focus on some of the events Johnson would have lived through and how he would have been affected by them.

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