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: In his 1906 article published in the Superior [Wisconsin] Telegram, Hiram Hayes, husband of Johnson's niece Mary Elizabeth Newton Hayes (daughter of his sister Sarah Osgood Johnson Newton), recalled that Johnson had painted portraits of the parents of Sam McQuade. It seems likely that the story told earlier by Mrs. Hayes in a 1901 article in The Evening Telegram, about a man in Superior offering Johnson gold to paint portraits of his parents, refers to the McQuades. Descendants of the sitters report that the portraits were painted from daguerreotypes.
Elizabeth Caldwell McQuade (1802–1866). Wife of James McQuade.
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