The sitter in the portrait stares at the viewer with deep brown eyes. She folds her arms across her lap, one hand resting on her white skirt and the other holding the sleeve of her bright green jacket. Her expression appears to convey gentle amusement. Who is this mystery woman painted by the Mexican artist Diego Rivera (1886–1957) more than 85 years ago?

Mary Joy Johnson (1909–1995), later Mary Joy Brown, came from a wealthy Utah family. Her father, Joy H. Johnson, co-founded a successful pharmacy in Salt Lake City which later became affiliated with Chicago-based Walgreens. With money came privilege, and Mary Joy’s family prepared her for the life of a debutante, including an education at Bryn Mawr College.

According to her granddaughter, Kelly Joy Brown-Lewis, Johnson was also a free spirit, seen by her family as “stubborn and willfully independent.” After graduating from Bryn Mawr, the 20-something moved to Mexico City and became part of Rivera’s artistic circle.

“I was living in Mexico between 1935–1939, as a buyer for various department stores in the U.S. on an exclusive basis,” recollected Johnson in a letter to the Cincinnati Art Museum in 1975.  “I met Diego Rivera through my work, and we became very good friends.”

Rivera painted her portrait, Miss Mary Joy Johnson, in 1939. In the same letter, Johnson described how the painting came about:

“He said he’d like to paint my portrait and very undiplomatically I asked him if he would paint me in the combined styles of Modigliani and the ancient Chinese masters. (I am now appalled by how brash, stupid, and unpolitic this request of mine was.) … The portrait caused some commotion at the time, because it was such a departure from Diego’s established style of painting …”

Perhaps the most striking element in the painting is the green jacket worn by Johnson.

“Incidentally, the ‘Green Blouse’ is not a blouse at all, but a crushed velvet Bolivian jacket, embroidered with white beads and trimmed with white fringe,” wrote Johnson in her 1975 letter to the museum. “I acquired it from a classmate of mine at Bryn Mawr; her father was building railroads in Bolivia. I still have it.”

After moving back to the States, Johnson eventually married an FBI agent named Bernard Brown and settled into a quieter life in the suburbs of Louisville, Kentucky.

The green velvet jacket was passed down through Johnson’s family and is now on view, along with the Rivera portrait, in Gallery 212 through the end of April 2025.