Existing comment:
McCormick Family, c. 1805, by Joshua Johnson (c. 1762/3, working 1796-1824).
When James McCormick came to Baltimore from County Tyrone, Ireland in 1786, the city was booming and his services as a cabinetmaker and carpenter were in demand. This portrait of his family represents McCormick's business success, for group portraits were expensive and fairly rare. The choice of African American artist Joshua Johnson in an interesting one. By this date, Johnson, then a free man, had painted several portraits of successful middle-class white men and women living in McCormick's Hanover Street neighborhood. |