Pauline Powell Burns

Pauline Powell Burns (1872–1912) was an American painter and pianist. She was the first African-American artist to exhibit paintings in California, in 1890.

Her great-grandfather was blacksmith Joseph Fossett, one of Thomas Jefferson's slaves who was freed by the terms of his will in 1826. Her maternal grandmother Isabella Fossett was also a slave and as a child was sold away from Monticello in 1827 as part of a settlement of estate debts, later escaping to Boston and eventually joining other family in Cincinnati. She was raised in Oakland's vibrant African-American community which by the late nineteenth century had "built a healthy network of commercial, educational and social institutions including churches, private schools, social clubs, music venues, real estate firms, insurance companies, funeral homes, and recreation centers," according to the Oakland Library.

On October 11, 1893, she married Edward E. Burns; they had no children. Violets is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Some documents relating to Powell's life are held in the Archives of California Art.