Neither the artist nor the sitter of this small likeness is known, but both likely originated in the Baltimore area, where there was a strong community of free people of color. The sitter is clearly a man of worth; he is dressed in a fine coat and crisp white shirt, wears an elaborate fob (for keys or a watch), and holds a sealed letter, signifying his literacy. Formal portraits of African-American sitters made before the Civil War are rare in any format, and those crafted in watercolor on ivory are rarer still. Ivory supports were valued for their delicacy, transparency, and whiteness, which allowed artists to create luminous portraits of their predominantly white sitters; these were treasured keepsakes in an era before photography. Recent scholarship centering on race in the discussion of portrait miniatures posits such objects as celebrations of whiteness and places them within objectionable trade practices in both humans and elephant ivory originating from Africa; ivory miniatures of Black sitters add complexity to the discussion. The unusual orange background seen here is the result of light exposure, which caused the original blue to fade away.

Our collection of over 200 American portrait miniatures includes only one other Black sitter, an 1898 revival-style example by Lucy Stanton. This example, depicting an educated Black gentleman in the decades before the Civil War, enriches the narratives we can offer about American art and American history, the major goal of our department’s collection strategy. We have a regular rotation of miniatures in Gallery 126, where our recent acquisition of a double portrait by Joshua Johnson (also from Baltimore) is displayed. Together, these two works will offer a compelling story about the free Black presence and engagement with the arts in the U.S. during the early nineteenth-century.

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