Boston – Two portraits by Joshua Johnson (c. 1763 - c.1825) – among the most prolific and earliest Black professional painters in the United States – will be offered at Bonhams Skinner's American Furniture & Decorative Arts sale from November 9 – 19. Known for painting a range of affluent patrons across Baltimore, Johnson was able to achieve a remarkable degree of success as a portraitist. Just over 80 works in total have been attributed to Johnson, and of those works over 30 of them are in major museum collections such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Gallery of Art in DC as well as The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The portraits on offer of a man and a woman, each estimated at $60,000 – 80,000, have all the hallmarks of Johnson's distinct style, notable for its freshness, vitality and rich, often imaginative, attention to detail. While the identity of either subject is unknown, Johnson communicates their refinement through small details such as the woman's beautifully rendered sheer lace cuffs and the gentleman's carefully windswept hair, with delicate brushstrokes to depict each curl.

Joshua Johnson was a self-taught virtuoso of early American painting who in his own words "derived from nature and industry his knowledge of art." Born enslaved in Maryland around 1763 to a white father and a once-known enslaved Black mother, Johnson's father purchased his son and stipulated that he would be free once he completed an apprenticeship to be a blacksmith. Johnson would have been freed from enslavement by 1784 and by 1796 was already listed in the Baltimore City Directory as being a portrait artist. Johnson's own circumstances as a free Black artist were uniquely complex, as throughout his career he would primary paint the white, sometimes slave-owner couples and families of Maryland. His work was recently highlighted in New York at the American Folk-Art Museum's exhibition "Unnamed Figures: Black Presence and Absence in the Early American North".

"Joshua Johnson's paintings truly speak for themselves, and we are honored to present not only one, but two works by this incredible, historically significant Black artist working in early America," commented Elizabeth Muir, Bonhams' Senior Specialist and Head of Sale for American Furniture & Decorative Arts. "These excellent examples of his work come at an exciting moment when Johnson as an artist is receiving a long-overdue reexamination and interest in his work."

The sale will also present more than 300 lots including early American furniture, paintings, needlepoint samplers, and flatware. Highlights include:

• Snowy Heron or White Egret, 1835 by John James Audubon (American, 1785-1851), estimated at $70,000 – 90,000.

• A fine and rare Chippendale mahogany dressing table, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1760-75, estimated at $30,000 – 50,000.

• Land of the Midnight Sun, an oil painting, by William Bradford (American, 1823-1892), estimated at $30,000 – 50,000.

• Samuel Luckett desk by John Shearer (Scottish American, active c. 1790-1820), Loudoun County, Virginia, 1810, estimated at $30,000 – 50,000.