Slightly over a decade in the past, Florida-based Dorita Sewell and her late mom Doris acquired a portray from a distant relative. An unsigned portrait of a fair-skinned girl with darkish, curly hair, the art work had been handed down over a number of generations of relations, who presumed the portray’s topic was an ancestor from the early nineteenth century. Over the following decade, the enigmatic portray sat wrapped in protecting plastic in Sewell’s house house till sooner or later, slightly over a yr in the past, she got here throughout a lecture by journalist James Johnston, who was going to be talking about self-taught Georgetown portraitist James Alexander Simpson.
“I believed, ‘Gee, possibly he may inform me one thing about my portray,” Sewell instructed Hyperallergic.
Now, years of unanswered questions and unconfirmed theories have lastly been put to relaxation, because the work prepares to go on public view for the primary time immediately, June 26, on the Baltimore Museum of Artwork (BMA). Attributed to Simpson by the BMA’s Curator of American Portray & Sculpture Virginia Anderson primarily based on its type, the topic’s clothes, and portraiture conventions of the period, the portray has been decided to depict Mary Ann Tritt Cassell, a lady of combined race who lived through the 1800s. Anderson instructed Hyperallergic that she additionally in contrast the portray to Simpson’s portrait of Mrs. Henry Lowe Mudd, which revealed placing similarities of their composition and brushwork, in addition to a portrait within the Smithsonian’s assortment that shares an analogous date to Sewell’s portray.
Whereas formal solo portraits of Black People had been extremely unusual throughout this era, this work holds a singular historic significance as seemingly the primary identified portrait commissioned by an American who was born into slavery.
Johnston, who lately revealed an article about his findings within the Washington Put up, suspects that Cassell’s mom Henrietta Steptoe seemingly paid for the portray as a marriage portrait. Born in 1779 on the Stratford Corridor plantation in Virginia, Steptoe lived roughly the primary third of her life enslaved by the Lee household till she was freed in 1803. She then moved to Georgetown, the place she joined a group of free Black People and labored as a midwife and nurse. In 1807, she gave delivery to her daughter, Mary Ann.
In 1839, Mary Ann married William Cassell, a Black man from Baltimore who was an lively member of the American Colonization Society, a company that sought to move free Black People again to Africa so as to forestall them from integrating with White society. In 1850, the Cassells moved to a Black American colony on the coast of Liberia, the place they in the end established everlasting residency, leaving her portrait behind along with her sister Rebecca.
“Mary Ann was this very proficient girl,” Johnston instructed Hyperallergic. “Her mom broke out of slavery and her daughter acquired an training. She went off to Africa. She taught a faculty and ran a hospital in a single era from slavery.”
Mary Ann died on February 15, 1871. Earlier than Rebecca died, she included a notice in her 1877 will to bequeath a portray of her sister to her granddaughter, and from there, the work made its manner down the household tree to Sewell and her mom, who died in 2016.
“There are solely about 5 – 6 bequests within the will, so it’s clear that this was considered one of her valued possessions,” Johnston stated, crediting researchers Carlton Fletcher and Jack Fallin for notifying him of the doc when he was investigating the portrait’s provenance and historical past.
The work can be not the one portray by Simpson depicting a traditionally marginalized determine from American historical past. The artist additionally painted considered one of two identified portraits of Yarrow Mamout, a previously enslaved African-American Muslim man who lived in the identical Georgetown group as Henrietta Steptoe. The work is at present on view within the Peabody Room of the DC public library’s Georgetown department.
Sewell instructed Hyperallergic that she plans to finally go to the portray at BMA now that it’s on show.
“Mother and I spent loads of time there [at the museum],” she stated, recalling her mom’s love of sketching and the way in her childhood, she used to “drag her” to the Nationwide Gallery of Artwork to view the art work on show.
“Now that it’ll be [at the BMA], I’m enthusiastic about it,” Sewell stated. “I feel it’s great that we are able to all get pleasure from it and study from it.”