Eastman Johnson

A distinguished American painter of sentimental, Victorian-genre images

By Alexandra A. Jopp

One of the most elegant artists of the last half of the nineteenth century, Eastman Johnson became famous for his insights into American culture and his efforts to establish the Metropolitan Museum of Art

I. Biography

In the nineteenth century, esteemed American artists were often credited with titles that tied them to Europe: Thomas Moran was the “American Turner,” John Henry Twachtman was the “American Monet,” Childe Hassam was the “American Sisley,” and Eastman Johnson was granted the appellation of the “American Rembrandt.” Though such comparisons to Old World brilliance were meant as honors, American artists often rejected them and worked to create a unique style that was detached from European models. Thus Johnson, even while working in seventeenth-century Dutch traditions, painted distinctly American subjects.

Eastman Johnson was born in Lovell, Maine, in 1824 and grew up in Fryeburg and Augusta. At an early age, he began working in the dry goods business, and in 1840, he was sent to a lithography shop in Boston. However, he found lithography to be monotonous and unfulfilling, and four years later, he returned to Augusta and worked as a crayon portraitist. He had a natural aptitude for art and attended art school in New York before moving to Washington, D.C. Working for the U.S. Senate, he painted portraits of Dolly Madison, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster and other famous public figures. Soon after, in 1846, he went back to Boston, where he opened a studio in Tremont Temple and produced portraits in crayon of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his family, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

In 1849, with the encouragement of the American Art Union, Johnson, accompanied by George Henry Hall, sailed to Europe for what would be six years of study. Johnson settled in Düsseldorf, Germany, a popular destination for young American artists. He enrolled in Düsseldorf Académie, where he started to work with colors, and in 1851, he entered the studio of Emanuel Leutze. During a stay in The Hague, Johnson studied seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish paintings, mainly works by Rembrandt and Anthony Van Dyck, and captured old Dutch traditions. Under this Dutch influence, the artist’s style evolved to include richer colors, dynamic design and exciting contrasts of light and shadow. Before returning to Washington in 1855, he spent two months in Paris, where he worked briefly with the French academic painter, Thomas Couture.

In the two years after his return to the United States, Johnson spent time in Superior, Wisc., painting the Indians of that area. After a short stay in Cincinnati in 1858, he moved to New York and opened a studio in the Old University Building in Washington Square. At an April 1859 exhibition at the National Academy of Design, he showed three crayon drawings, one of which – Negro Life in the South, or Old Kentucky Home – would come to be regarded as his most original and remarkable work. This large painting – which depicts a moment in the life of slaves in the nation’s capital – brought fame to Johnson and established him as a major American genre artist. Art critic Henry Tuckerman saw in the picture an indication of the progress of genre painting: “We realize how national genre art … has advanced. … .Not only is the style more finished, but the significance is deeper, the sentiment more delicate.” 1

In 1869, Johnson married Elizabeth Buckley of Troy, N.Y., with whom he had a daughter. The following year, he visited Nantucket, Mass., and in 1871, he built a house there where he would spend his summers. In Nantucket, he worked with rural subjects and produced a series depicting cranberry harvesting.

Over the course of his fruitful career, Johnson developed a reputation as an accomplished and adept painter of not only individual and group portraits but also urban scenes and landscapes. He had a feel for color, and his depictions of groups of farmers are often charismatic in tone. His subjects range from farm scenes to country house interiors to rural genre painting. The Dutch influence can be seen in paintings such as The Mount Vernon Kitchen (1857) and Susan Ray’s Kitchen (1875).

In 1906, at the age of 82, an ill and feeble Johnson began to show signs of heart weakness. He died in New York, surrounded by his wife Elizabeth, his daughter Ethel and his son-in-law Alfred Ronald Conkling.

II. Chronology

• 1824 Born on July 29 in Lovell, Maine, to Philip Carrigan Johnson and Mary Kimball Chandler
• 1840 Began training at Boston lithography shop
• 1845 Moved with parents to Washington, D.C.
• 1849 Traveled to Düsseldorf, Germany, where he studied at Royal Academy
• 1855 Worked for several months with Thomas Couture in Paris
• 1856 Returned to United States
• 1856-57 Made extended visits to Superior, Wisc., where he painted studies of local Ojibwa life as well as distinguished portraits of Indians
• 1858 Painted Negro Life in the South (or Old Kentucky Home), which established his reputation as an artist; moved to a studio in New York City.
• 1859 Negro Life at the South exhibited for first time at National Academy of Design in New York City
• 1860 Elected to be an academician at National Academy of Design
• 1869 Married Elizabeth Buckley of Troy, N.Y.
• 1880s Gradually gave up genre painting to work almost exclusively in portraits
• 1906 Died at his home in New York

III. Collections

• Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts
• Art Institute of Chicago
• Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Maine
• Brooklyn Museum, New York City
• Butler Institute of American Art, Ohio
• Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia
• Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts
• Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio
• Colby College Museum of Art, Maine
• Currier Gallery of Art, New Hampshire
• Dallas Museum of Art, Texas
• Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan
• Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine
• Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
• Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina
• Harvard University Art Museums, Massachusetts
• Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Laurel, Mississippi
• Maier Museum of Art at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, Virginia
• Maryland State Archives
• Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, New York
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
• Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin
• Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota
• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
• National Academy Museum & School of Fine Arts, New York City
• National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
• National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C.
• New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut
• New-York Historical Society
• Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona
• Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey
• Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
• San Diego Museum of Art, California
• Sheldon Art Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska
• Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.
• Smithsonian Institution Art Inventories
• Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago
• The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket
• The Walters Art Museum, Maryland
• Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid
• Timken Museum of Art, San Diego, California
• U.S. Senate Art Collection
• Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
• Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania

IV. Exhibitions

• 1861-1900 National Academy of Design
• 1861-80, 1887 Brooklyn Art Association
• 1862-63, 1877, 1893-94, 1899-1902 Boston Athenaeum, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art
• 1877-1903 Boston Art Club
• 1889, 1900 Art Institute of Chicago (medal)
• 1889, 1900 Paris Expo (medal)
• 1898-1901 Carnegie Institute
• 1901 Pan-American Expo, Buffalo (gold)
• 1904 St. Louis Expo (gold)
• 2004 Francine Clark Art Institute

V. Memberships

• Lotos Club
• Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Municipal Art Society
• National Academy of Design
• Society of American Artists
• Century Club
• Union League Club

VI. Notes

1: Patricia Johnston, Seeing High and Low: Representing Social Conflict in American Visual Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), p. 106.

VII. Suggested Resources

• Baur J.I.H. Eastman Johnson, 1824-1906. Brooklyn, New York, 1940.

• Hills P. The Genre Painting of Eastman Johnson: The Sources and Development of His Style and Themes. Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1977.