Catalogue Entry
Johnson’s paintings of women are often his best portraits, exhibiting a range of techniques and emphasizing their intelligent faces even when enwrapped in sumptuous fabrics, such as we see in Edwina Booth. —PH
MacGibeny, 2021: According to John I. H. Baur, in his Notebook #1 at the Archives of American Art, this painting was altered by its earliest known owner, Albert Rosenthal: "The picture has been marked off by Rosenthal for a square frame and the background within the square entirely 'reglazed' in grey by him, according to his own admission. He appears also to have used about the same grey in many of the shadows in the face, esp. around the l. [left] eye. The unretouched background and shadows around the r. [right] eye show typical transparent brown of E. J." Rosenthal, himself a painter and printmaker, was an avid collector of Johnson's work; Baur understood him to have purchased many works directly from Mrs. Johnson after the artist's death.
Mary Kimball Chandler Johnson (1796–1855). Wife of Philip Carrigan Johnson; mother of Johnson, Reuben, Judith, Mary, Philip, Sarah, Harriet, and Eleanor.