J. Hall Pleasants Research Files

Dr. J. Hall Pleasants (1873-1957), an authority on early Maryland painters and their works, earned his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1899. He served on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine as an instructor in medical diagnosis from 1900 to 1935. He also established a private practice, but soon shifted his focus to advocacy for patients with tuberculosis. After resigning as a member of the Maryland Tuberculosis Sanatorium Commission in 1921, Dr. Pleasants became interested in early Maryland paintings and began documenting thousands of works in his home state.

Dr. Pleasants first became associated with the Frick Art Reference Library in 1924, in response to a letter from Library Director Helen Clay Frick requesting his assistance in identifying paintings to photograph in the Baltimore area. The Library had begun photographing artwork in both private and public collections in 1922 in order to acquire photographs for its Photoarchive. Dr. Pleasants' involvement in organizing and participating in Frick Art Reference Library photographing expeditions in Maryland led to a mutual exchange of research and photographs with the Library that lasted 33 years. Dr. Pleasants provided the Library with information on thousands of Maryland paintings and miniatures, but the bulk of the research he shared concerned the paintings that had been photographed by the Library.

His other areas of research included genealogy, history, and Maryland silver. His publications include Four Late Eighteenth-Century Anglo-American Landscape Painters (1943), Maryland Silversmiths, 1715-1830 (1930), Two Hundred and Fifty Years of Painting in Maryland (1945), and Joshua Johnston, the First American Negro Portrait Painter (1942). He was a trustee of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Johns Hopkins University, and the Peabody Institute, and vice president of the Maryland Historical Society for 23 years. Dr. Pleasants' personal archive of approximately 4,000 photographs and accompanying notes, which he had organized using a modified version of the Frick Art Reference Library classification system, were bequeathed to the Maryland Historical Society upon his death in 1957.