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 Princeton University Art Museum

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Photo: Abigael MacGibeny

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Photo: Abigael MacGibeny

Inscription

Photo: Courtesy of Princeton University Art Museum

[ 37.1 U.S. Early and Euro Figure & Landscape Sketches ]

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37.1 U.S. Early and Euro Figure & Landscape Sketches

Johnson finished his formal schooling at fifteen and worked in a dry goods store where he began making drawings. Responding to his talent, his father sent him to work in a lithography shop in Boston, probably Bufford’s. Several figure and landscape sketches survive from the early 1840s which indicate the ways he was exploring the human figure and the landscape about him using graphite pencil. More importantly, he began to excel as a portrait draughtsman in these early years; see Themes 43.1–.9, U.S. Early Portrait Drawings.

Johnson's reason for his sojourn in Düsseldorf and The Hague, 1849–1855, was to learn to paint with oil (see Themes 1.0–5.0). To achieve that goal, he studied anatomy while still making graphite sketches of interiors, landscapes, and figures from life. Among his best composed sketches were those done on trips to the Dutch countryside, especially those done at Dongen, the Netherlands. —PH

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Hills no. 37.1.2v

Baur no. 449

Sheet of Figure Sketches [verso of Sheet of Figure Sketches]

c.1842–46

Locale: Augusta, Maine

Graphite and charcoal on blue wove paper

12 9/16 x 15 7/8 in. (31.9 x 40.3 cm)

Inscribed lower right: Johns/on/J [elaborate script "J"s are the same style as those in "Johnson" written on recto]

Princeton University Art Museum, Gift of Frank Jewett Mather Jr. (x1948-1826)

Recto: Sheet of Figure Sketches, c.1846 (Hills no. 37.1.1r)

Description/Remarks

Baur 1940, p. 30: "Both sides of the paper are covered with numerous small drawings, some of which may have been planned as illustrations for a story."

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

Frank Jewett Mather Jr., until 1948

Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey, 1948 (by gift)

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), pp. 30, 81, no. 449.

Hills Examination/Opinion

Examination date(s): May 29, 2019

Examination notes: Man in interior and two heads. Soft handling.

Record last updated February 28, 2022. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.

Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "Sheet of Figure Sketches [verso of Sheet of Figure Sketches], c.1842–46 (Hills no. 37.1.2v)." In Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=1219 (accessed on May 2, 2025).