Bowdoin College Homepage
Bowdoin College Museum of Art Logo and Wordmark

Advanced Search
Preview image of work. oil on canvas,  Portrait of a Man (Abner Coker) 5625
IIIF Logo
1963.490

Recommend keywords

Help us make our collections more accessible by providing keywords to describe this artwork. The BCMA uses the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus to provide consistent keywords. Enter a keyword in the field below and you will be prompted with a list of possible matching AAT preferred terms.

 
 

Portrait of a Man (Abner Coker)

Export record as: Plain text | JSON | CDWA-Lite | VRA Core 4

Artist

Joshua Johnson (Joshua Johnston) (1789 - 1832)

Title

Portrait of a Man (Abner Coker)

Creation Date

ca. 1805-1810

Century

early 19th century

Dimensions

27 7/8 in. x 22 in. (70.8 cm x 55.88 cm)

Object Type

painting

Creation Place

North America, United States

Medium and Support

oil on canvas

Credit Line

Museum Purchase, George Otis Hamlin Fund

Copyright

Public Domain

Accession Number

1963.490

This painting is a rare example of an early portrait of an African American by the African American artist Joshua Johnson (occasionally spelled Johnston). Johnson’s naturalistic style eschewed the theatricality and painterly panache of his contemporaries. Instead, he emphasized the details of the sitter’s likeness and downplayed the role of color, perhaps to enhance his subject’s sobriety and dignity. Johnson, born enslaved and later self–emancipated, appeared in Baltimore city directories as a portrait painter, with nearly 100 canvases, mostly of white individuals, attributed to him. He may have learned to paint while working for the artist Charles Willson Peale’s extended family. This portrait likely depicts the Reverend Abner Coker (ca. 1767–1833) of Baltimore’s Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The A. M. E. Church was first established in Philadelphia in 1816 by African Americans seeking independence from white Methodists. The denomination quickly grew throughout the mid-Atlantic states, with Coker leading the Baltimore congregation.

Object Description

Portrait of an African-American man, possibly a cleric, and sometimes identified as possibly Richard Coker or Abner Coker.


Keywords: portraits