Catalogue Entry
This theme presents finished works in charcoal and pastel, often with touches of white chalk. (Note that the word “crayon” has often been used in the historical evidence; see Technical Information on Johnson's Practices.) When related to specific paintings, such works are likely to have been done after the finished paintings for a patron, or for exhibition and sale. These works may have originated using a transfer technique–from painting to drawing or from drawing to painting.
As Sheldon Keck wrote in “A Use of Infra-Red Photography in the Study of Technique,” Technical Studies in the Field of the Fine Arts, 1941:
Johnson's procedure, as thus reconstructed, seems to have been to prepare carefully in advance of his painting a drawing of the whole or of important parts. In this he determined as well the modelling and chiaroscuro to be used in his painting. He next traced the drawing and transferred the outline to the picture priming. He diligently followed this outline in his application of paint. The drawing of the "Girl with Glass" of which a painted version appears in "The New Bonnet" illustrates this conclusion. The measurements of the drawn and painted figures coincide and the infra-red photograph reveals the guide lines in the painting.
—PH
MacGibeny, 2022: The description of the girl's hair as "flying" suggests this may be a study for "The Girl I Left Behind Me", in which the subject's hair is blown back by the wind. According to John I. H. Baur's Notebook #1 at the Archives of American Art, 1938–1941, p. 60, the sheet originally measured 18 3/4 x 12 1/4 inches and subsequently was folded.
