Catalogue Entry
After Johnson arrived in Düsseldorf in late 1849 his earliest portrait drawings were graphite sketches of his instructors and artist friends. He continued to make drawings when he moved to The Hague in 1851. As he began to receive commissions, Johnson used charcoal and worked much in the style of the late 1840s drawings he had done in the United States. It is likely that he may have done many more sketches, but those that have been located, of his friends and teachers, were ones he selected to bring back to the U.S.; the commissioned portrait drawings of Europeans generally stayed in Europe. —PH
MacGibeny, 2022: German landscape painter Andreas Achenbach was one of the instructors at the Düsseldorf Academy where Johnson had traveled to learn to paint, 1849–1851. Johnson sketched several other teachers and students of the Academy as well, including Elias Büsken, Ludwig Knaus, Otto Knille, Heinrich Mücke, and Worthington Whittredge.
Hills, 2022: August Belmont, Ambassador from the United States in the Netherlands and early patron of Johnson, owned four landscape paintings by Achenbach, which were included in the exhibition The Belmont Collection at the National Academy of Design in 1857.
Andreas Achenbach (1815–1910). German landscape painter; instructor at the Royal Academy of Düsseldorf at the time that Johnson was staying there. Brother of landscape painter Oswald Achenbach.
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