Born sometime before 1670, probably in Ireland, Henrietta Deering was married to the Reverend Gideon Johnston in Dublin in April 1705. Of her earlier life nothing is known. Two years later they emigrated to America and settled in Charles Town (now Charleston), South Carolina. Their life there was hard: beset by poverty and illness, Henrietta Johnston cared for her husband, who was also often ill, served as his secretary, kept the house, cared for her children, and found time to supplement their meager income by doing portraits of the wealthy, the powerful, and the prominent. Apparently untrained, she employed native talent to produce portraits of frank, unadorned directness. They were small, generally 9 by 12 inches and never larger than 14 by 16, and were done in pastels, a technique only then coming into widespread use. She was almost certainly the earliest worker in that medium and quite possibly the earliest woman artist in America. Some 40 portraits by her are known, most done between 1707 and 1720. She was forced to support herself after her husband╒s death in 1716, and she may have done so in part by boarding in the homes of her subjects. A number of portraits done in New York as late as 1725 have been attributed to her. The place and date of her death are unknown, but she was buried in Charles Town on March 7, 1729.
