![Winter Scene [verso of Little Brown Boy], c.1860–79 (Hills no. 15.0.7v). Overall](https://cdn.panopticoncr.com/eastjoh001/catalogue_images/supp_sm/myzgafqp/Winter%20Scene%20permission%20%28RISD%29%20smaller.jpg)
Johnson did few landscapes. Of those he did, he seems never to have sent them out on exhibition. The first landscapes were done early on in his European sojourn. Upon returning to the United States he painted a few landscape scenes around Mount Vernon and also views of the settlements around Lake Superior where he traveled in 1856. Later, in the 1860s, he made intimate views on his trips into nature, probably done with men friends in the summers. The few that exist show sunlight falling on paths that lead through woodland trees or suggest a haze on quiet lakes. None of them are dramatic views of mountains or rivers. —PH
Hills, 2022: Although John I. H. Baur owned and annotated a copy of the catalogue of Johnson's 1907 Estate Sale, he did not include this work in his own 1940 catalogue listing; he must have obtained it after publication.
Patricia Mandel, Selection VII: American Paintings from the Museum Collection, ca 1800–1930, 1977: "A winter scene is painted on the back of the panel, about six inches from the top. It includes black tracks in the snow and the silhouetted figures of horses and sheds in the far distant right, as well as a long, low building with yellow lights burning and snow covering the roof."