Eastman Johnson
Encyclopedia
Eastman Johnson
was an American
painter, and Co-Founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
, with his name inscribed at its entrance. Best known for his genre painting
s, paintings of scenes from everyday life, and his portraits both of everyday people, he also painted portraits of prominent Americans such as Abraham Lincoln
, Nathaniel Hawthorne
, Ralph Waldo Emerson
, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
. His later works often show the influence of the 17th century Dutch masters whom he studied while living in The Hague
, and he was even known as The American Rembrandt in his day.
Johnson was born in Lovell, Maine
, the eighth and last child of Philip Carrigan Johnson (Secretary of State of Maine
1840, and Mary Kimball Chandler (born in New Hampshire, 18 October 1796, married 1818). His eldest brother Commodore Philip Carrigan Johnson Jr..jpg)
(father of Vice Admiral Alfred Wilkinson Johnson
) was followed by his beloved sisters Harriet, Judith, Mary, Sarah, Nell and his brother Reuben. Eastman grew up in Fryeburg and Augusta
, where the family lived at Pleasant Street and later at 61 Winthrop Street.
His career as an artist began when his father, the owner of several businesses, Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Maine (ancient Free and Accepted Masons) (1836-1844), Secretary of State for Maine (1840) was appointed by US President James Polk, after his patron the Governor of Maine John Fairfield
entered the US Senate, as Chief Clerk in the Bureau of Construction, Equipment, and Repair of the Navy Department. From 1853, the family lived at 266 F Street, between Thirteenth and Fourteenth Streets and just a few blocks from the White House and the Navy Department Offices, Washington DC. His father apprenticed him in 1840 to a Boston lithographer. In 1849 he moved to Düsseldorf
, Germany
where many artists, including many Americans, studied Art,
and took part in the Düsseldorf school of painting. There he was accepted into the studio Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, a German who had lived in the United States for a while before returning to Germany.
– Johnson then moved to The Hague and studied 17th century Dutch and Flemish masters. He ended his European travels in Paris, studying with the academic painter Thomas Couture in 1855. After returning to America in 1855 due to the death of his mother. In 1857 he lived and painted among the native Anishinaabe
(Ojibwe) near Superior, Wisconsin
.
In 1859, he established a studio in New York city and secured his reputation as an American artist with an exhibition featuring his painting Negro Life at the South or as it is more popularly known Old Kentucky Home.
He was also a member of the Union League Club of New York
, which holds many of his paintings. In 1869 he married Elizabeth Buckley, and had one daughter, Ethel Eastman Johnson, who was herself born in 1870 and married Alfred Ronalds Conkling in 1896, nephew of Senator Roscoe Conkling
. One among their three daughters, Muriel Lorillard Ronalds Conkling, married in London on 1st August 1922 Baron Louis Mello van Reigersberg Versluys of Elburg, Holland, an officer in the First Royal Dutch Hussars, by whom she had children.
On his death, Eastman Johnson was buried at Green Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
Johnson's style is largely realistic in both subject matter and in execution. His original photorealistic charcoal sketches were not strongly influenced by period artists, but are informed more by his lithography training. Later works show influence by the 17th century Dutch and Flemish masters, and also by Jean François Millet. Echoes of Millet's The Gleaners can be seen in Johnson's The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket although the emotional tone of the work is far different.
His careful portrayal of individuals rather than stereotypes enhances the realism of his paintings. Ojibwe artist Carl Gawboy notes that the faces in the 1857 portraits of Ojibwe people by Johnson are recognizable in people in the Ojibwe community today. Some of his paintings such as Ojibwe Wigwam at Grand Portage display near photorealism
long before the photorealism movement but in keeping with the American tradition of realism that can be seen in the works of Charles Willson Peale
whose painting The Stairway Group is said to have fooled George Washington.
His careful attention to light sources contributes to the realism. Portraits Girl and Pets and The Boy Lincoln make use of single light sources in a manner that echoes the 17th Century Dutch Masters.
Jonhson's subject matter included portraits of the wealthy and influential from the President of the United States, to literary figures to portraits of unnamed individuals, but he is best known for his kind of work, his paintings of everyday people in everyday scenes. Johnson often repainted the same subject changing style or details.
In contrast, the much celebrated Old Stagecoach was mostly staged in his studio and its composition carefully planned. The stage coach itself originated as an abandoned coach that he encountered and sketched while hiking in the Catskils. The children were painted from local children recruited from near his Nantucket Studio. Despite this artifice, the painting was celebrated as wholesome, natural and bucolic.
After his return from Europe, Johnson went to visit his sister in what was then the western frontier of Wisconsin
. Carl Gawboy, a modern day Ojibwe artist, has posited that Johnson's guide was likely George Bonga
, a son of Pierre Bonga
, a freed slave, who had married an Ojibwe woman. Gawboy speculates that Johnson's time with this mixed-race family changed his approach to painting. Certainly Johnson was successful in getting many Ojibwe to sit for him. His drawings and painting depict Ojibwe people in a much more intimate and relaxed manner than is usual for painting of that period. Also unusual was that he often included the subject's names in the title of the works. He did not focus solely on individual portraits, but also did paintings and sketches of scenes which including the Ojibwe dwellings, St. Louis bay
, and other groupings of Ojibwe in everyday activities.
Johnson left Wisconsin due to wide spread financial panic that rendered his real estate investments there worthless. He left there for Cincinnati, Ohio to make money via portrait commissions and did not return to the subject of the Ojibwe.
His paintings and sketches of the Ojibwe remained unsold during his lifetime and now are in the possession of the St. Louis County Historical Society in Duluth, Minnesota (www.thehistorypeople.org).∼∼∼
Negro Life at the South is considered Johnson's masterpiece. Although this painting was popularly known as Old Kentucky Home nearly from the beginning, it depicts a scene from Washington, D.C.
The painting is a domestic scene behind a dilapidated house. On the left in the foreground is a couple courting, in the middle there is a banjo player playing while an adult woman dances with a child as others look on. One of the onlookers, far to the right is a young white woman in an elegant white dress. Above the scene, an adult woman looks out a window as she steadies a small child sitting on the partially collapsed roof. Skin tones vary in the scene from person to person. Aside from the white observer on the far right, the palest person in the scene is the young woman being courted. The darkest skin belongs to the woman dancing with the child in the middle foreground. Some have viewed this as simple realism, others see it as an invitation to the viewer to contemplate the mixed racial heritage of those portrayed. Both proponents and detractors of slavery have seen this painting as defending their positions.
Another painting of Johnson's is equally open to interpretation. A Ride for Liberty – The Fugitive Slaves painted in 1862, depicts a slave family riding to freedom. The male and child appear to have dark skin, while the woman appears to be Caucasian, looking behind her as if concerned about being followed. While the escape of a plantation slave from captivity is unambiguous, the Caucasian woman may have been escaping from a different type of slavery – that of marital servitude or cultural restrictions that frowned upon interracial relationships. This is consistent with Johnson's other explorations of mixed race. The painting is allegedly based on Johnson's observations during the Civil War battle of Manassas.
was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
painter, and Co-Founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, with his name inscribed at its entrance. Best known for his genre painting
Genre painting
Genre works, also called genre scenes or genre views, are pictorial representations in any of various media that represent scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes. Such representations may be realistic, imagined, or...
s, paintings of scenes from everyday life, and his portraits both of everyday people, he also painted portraits of prominent Americans such as Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...
. His later works often show the influence of the 17th century Dutch masters whom he studied while living in The Hague
The Hague
The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...
, and he was even known as The American Rembrandt in his day.
Biographic information
Lovell, Maine
Lovell is a town in Oxford County, Maine, United States. The population was 974 at the 2000 census. Lovell is the site of Kezar Lake, a resort area.-History:...
, the eighth and last child of Philip Carrigan Johnson (Secretary of State of Maine
Secretary of State of Maine
The Secretary of State of Maine is elected by the Legislature in that U.S. state. The Maine Secretary of State is responsible for administering elections, the Maine State Archives, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, and for chartering corporations. The Secretary of State is elected to no more than two...
1840, and Mary Kimball Chandler (born in New Hampshire, 18 October 1796, married 1818). His eldest brother Commodore Philip Carrigan Johnson Jr.
Alfred Wilkinson Johnson
Vice Admiral Alfred Wilkinson Johnson was an officer of the United States Navy who served in the Spanish-American War and World War I, commanded several ships, and served as Director of Naval Intelligence, and in various other posts, before his retirement in December 1940. Recalled to duty during...
) was followed by his beloved sisters Harriet, Judith, Mary, Sarah, Nell and his brother Reuben. Eastman grew up in Fryeburg and Augusta
Augusta, Maine
Augusta is the capital of the US state of Maine, county seat of Kennebec County, and center of population for Maine. The city's population was 19,136 at the 2010 census, making it the third-smallest state capital after Montpelier, Vermont and Pierre, South Dakota...
, where the family lived at Pleasant Street and later at 61 Winthrop Street.
His career as an artist began when his father, the owner of several businesses, Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Maine (ancient Free and Accepted Masons) (1836-1844), Secretary of State for Maine (1840) was appointed by US President James Polk, after his patron the Governor of Maine John Fairfield
John Fairfield
John Fairfield was a U.S. politician from Maine.He was born in Saco, Maine and attended the Saco schools, Thornton Academy and Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. He then engaged in trade and studied law, being admitted to the bar in 1826, and practiced successfully in his native town and in...
entered the US Senate, as Chief Clerk in the Bureau of Construction, Equipment, and Repair of the Navy Department. From 1853, the family lived at 266 F Street, between Thirteenth and Fourteenth Streets and just a few blocks from the White House and the Navy Department Offices, Washington DC. His father apprenticed him in 1840 to a Boston lithographer. In 1849 he moved to Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
where many artists, including many Americans, studied Art,
and took part in the Düsseldorf school of painting. There he was accepted into the studio Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, a German who had lived in the United States for a while before returning to Germany.
– Johnson then moved to The Hague and studied 17th century Dutch and Flemish masters. He ended his European travels in Paris, studying with the academic painter Thomas Couture in 1855. After returning to America in 1855 due to the death of his mother. In 1857 he lived and painted among the native Anishinaabe
Anishinaabe
Anishinaabe or Anishinabe—or more properly Anishinaabeg or Anishinabek, which is the plural form of the word—is the autonym often used by the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Algonquin peoples. They all speak closely related Anishinaabemowin/Anishinaabe languages, of the Algonquian language family.The meaning...
(Ojibwe) near Superior, Wisconsin
Superior, Wisconsin
Superior is a city in and the county seat of Douglas County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 26,960 at the 2010 census. Located at the junction of U.S. Highways 2 and 53, it is north of and adjacent to both the Village of Superior and the Town of Superior.Superior is at the western...
.
In 1859, he established a studio in New York city and secured his reputation as an American artist with an exhibition featuring his painting Negro Life at the South or as it is more popularly known Old Kentucky Home.
He was also a member of the Union League Club of New York
Union League Club of New York
The Union League Club of New York is a private social club in New York City. Its fourth and current clubhouse, which opened on February 2, 1931, is a building designed by Benjamin Wistar Morris, III, located at 38 East 37th Street between Madison and Park Avenue in the Murray Hill section of...
, which holds many of his paintings. In 1869 he married Elizabeth Buckley, and had one daughter, Ethel Eastman Johnson, who was herself born in 1870 and married Alfred Ronalds Conkling in 1896, nephew of Senator Roscoe Conkling
Roscoe Conkling
Roscoe Conkling was a politician from New York who served both as a member of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. He was the leader of the Stalwart faction of the Republican Party and the last person to refuse a U.S. Supreme Court appointment after he had...
. One among their three daughters, Muriel Lorillard Ronalds Conkling, married in London on 1st August 1922 Baron Louis Mello van Reigersberg Versluys of Elburg, Holland, an officer in the First Royal Dutch Hussars, by whom she had children.
On his death, Eastman Johnson was buried at Green Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
Style
His careful portrayal of individuals rather than stereotypes enhances the realism of his paintings. Ojibwe artist Carl Gawboy notes that the faces in the 1857 portraits of Ojibwe people by Johnson are recognizable in people in the Ojibwe community today. Some of his paintings such as Ojibwe Wigwam at Grand Portage display near photorealism
Photorealism
Photorealism is the genre of painting based on using the camera and photographs to gather information and then from this information creating a painting that appears photographic...
long before the photorealism movement but in keeping with the American tradition of realism that can be seen in the works of Charles Willson Peale
Charles Willson Peale
Charles Willson Peale was an American painter, soldier and naturalist. He is best remembered for his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution, as well as establishing one of the first museums....
whose painting The Stairway Group is said to have fooled George Washington.
His careful attention to light sources contributes to the realism. Portraits Girl and Pets and The Boy Lincoln make use of single light sources in a manner that echoes the 17th Century Dutch Masters.
Subject matter
New England
His depictions of New England life, such as 'The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket, The Old Stagecoach, Husking Bee, Island of Nantucket, The Sap Gatherers, and Sugaring Off at the Camp, Fryeburg, Maine established him solidly as a genre painter. Over the course of five years, he made many sketches and smaller paintings depicting the process of turning maple sap into maple sugar, but never completed the larger work he had started.In contrast, the much celebrated Old Stagecoach was mostly staged in his studio and its composition carefully planned. The stage coach itself originated as an abandoned coach that he encountered and sketched while hiking in the Catskils. The children were painted from local children recruited from near his Nantucket Studio. Despite this artifice, the painting was celebrated as wholesome, natural and bucolic.
Ojibwe
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...
. Carl Gawboy, a modern day Ojibwe artist, has posited that Johnson's guide was likely George Bonga
George Bonga
George Bonga was a fur trader of African American and Native American descent who was one of the first African American descent born in what is now Minnesota. He was the son of Pierre Bonga, and an Ojibwe mother....
, a son of Pierre Bonga
Pierre Bonga
Pierre Bonga was reportedly the son of Jean and Jeanne Bonga, a freed slave couple who had belonged to the British officer commanding at Mackinac Island in the 1780s. Pierre worked for the North West Company, and later for the American Fur Company...
, a freed slave, who had married an Ojibwe woman. Gawboy speculates that Johnson's time with this mixed-race family changed his approach to painting. Certainly Johnson was successful in getting many Ojibwe to sit for him. His drawings and painting depict Ojibwe people in a much more intimate and relaxed manner than is usual for painting of that period. Also unusual was that he often included the subject's names in the title of the works. He did not focus solely on individual portraits, but also did paintings and sketches of scenes which including the Ojibwe dwellings, St. Louis bay
Saint Louis River
The St. Louis River is a river in the U.S. states of Minnesota and Wisconsin that flows into Lake Superior. The largest U.S. river to flow into the lake, it is 179 miles in length and starts near Hoyt Lakes, Minnesota. The river's watershed is in area...
, and other groupings of Ojibwe in everyday activities.
Johnson left Wisconsin due to wide spread financial panic that rendered his real estate investments there worthless. He left there for Cincinnati, Ohio to make money via portrait commissions and did not return to the subject of the Ojibwe.
His paintings and sketches of the Ojibwe remained unsold during his lifetime and now are in the possession of the St. Louis County Historical Society in Duluth, Minnesota (www.thehistorypeople.org).∼∼∼
Slavery
The painting is a domestic scene behind a dilapidated house. On the left in the foreground is a couple courting, in the middle there is a banjo player playing while an adult woman dances with a child as others look on. One of the onlookers, far to the right is a young white woman in an elegant white dress. Above the scene, an adult woman looks out a window as she steadies a small child sitting on the partially collapsed roof. Skin tones vary in the scene from person to person. Aside from the white observer on the far right, the palest person in the scene is the young woman being courted. The darkest skin belongs to the woman dancing with the child in the middle foreground. Some have viewed this as simple realism, others see it as an invitation to the viewer to contemplate the mixed racial heritage of those portrayed. Both proponents and detractors of slavery have seen this painting as defending their positions.
Another painting of Johnson's is equally open to interpretation. A Ride for Liberty – The Fugitive Slaves painted in 1862, depicts a slave family riding to freedom. The male and child appear to have dark skin, while the woman appears to be Caucasian, looking behind her as if concerned about being followed. While the escape of a plantation slave from captivity is unambiguous, the Caucasian woman may have been escaping from a different type of slavery – that of marital servitude or cultural restrictions that frowned upon interracial relationships. This is consistent with Johnson's other explorations of mixed race. The painting is allegedly based on Johnson's observations during the Civil War battle of Manassas.