Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné

Patricia Hills, PhD, Founder and Director | Abigael MacGibeny, Project Manager and Co-Author

Catalogue Entry

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Photo: Courtesy of the Frick Art Reference Library

Overall

Photo: Patricia Hills

[ 45.1 U.S. Later Portrait Drawings, Men ]

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45.1 U.S. Later Portrait Drawings, Men

When Johnson returned from Europe late in 1855 and moved in with his family in Washington, D.C., he began receiving portrait commissions. Like those done earlier, Johnson generally used charcoal (named in some records as black chalk) with touches of white and created a strong chiaroscuro for his sitters. Gradually he moved away from the strong chiaroscuro style he had been using, and his later portraits tend to be sketchier (as was the taste in art at the time) but no less professional. He used pastel to bring in color in some of these portraits. —PH

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Hills no. 45.1.19

Baur no. 366

John Stewart Kennedy

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston title: Portrait of Gentleman with Sideburns

Alternate titles: Gentleman with Sideburns; Portrait of a Gentleman with Side Whiskers; Portrait of a Gentleman with Sideburns; Portrait of a Man

1887

Charcoal and white chalk on paper laid down on canvas

17 7/8 x 12 in. (45.4 x 30.5 cm)

Initialed and dated lower left in white chalk: E.J./1887

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of Maxim Karolik for the M. and M. Karolik Collection of American Watercolors and Drawings, 1800–1875 (59.113)

Provenance

Likely Eastman Johnson estate/Mrs. Eastman Johnson, New York, 1906 (by bequest)

Albert Rosenthal, New Hope, Pennsylvania, until 1939 (likely by purchase from Mrs. Johnson in 1915)

Estate of Albert Rosenthal, with Albert Duveen, New York

Albert Duveen, New York, and M. Knoedler & Co., New York, February 8, 1946 (as Gentleman with Sideburns)

Maxim Karolik, Newport, Rhode Island

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, February 12, 1959 (by gift)

Exhibitions

1946 M. Knoedler & Co.

M. Knoedler & Co, New York, Paintings and Drawings by Eastman Johnson, January 7–26, 1946. (Exhibition catalogue: M. Knoedler & Co. 1946), no. 23, as Gentleman with Sideburns. Traveled to: The California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, March 1946 (California Palace 1946).

References

Baur 1940

Baur, John I. H. An American Genre Painter: Eastman Johnson, 1824–1906. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, 1940. Exhibition catalogue (1939 Brooklyn Museum), p. 77, no. 366, as Portrait of a Man.

M. Knoedler & Co. 1946

Paintings and Drawings by Eastman Johnson. New York: M. Knoedler & Co., 1946. Exhibition catalogue (1946 M. Knoedler & Co.), n.p., no. 23, as Gentleman with Sideburns.

MFA Boston 1962

M. & M. Karolik Collection of American Water Colors & Drawings, 1800–1875. Vol. 1. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1962. Exhibition catalogue, p. 206, no. 412, as Portrait of a Gentleman with Sideburns.

Hills Examination/Opinion

Examination date(s): March 7, 2018

Sitter Biography

Sitter: Kennedy, John Stewart

Biography:

John Stewart Kennedy (1830–1909). Member of the Union League Club from 1871 until his death.

White, Terry James. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1967–.

Kennedy, John Stewart

Keywords

Portrait pose:
- Bust length »
- Portrait »

Record last updated March 15, 2022. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.

Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "John Stewart Kennedy, 1887 (Hills no. 45.1.19)." In Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=1068 (accessed on May 2, 2025).