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
MacGibeny, 2022: The following anecdote written by Henry Holt in The Weekly Review, July 1921, may speak to the finished quality of this drawing: "[Johnson's] studio was in the top of the house, and I spent many a happy moment there. Once he had me come to criticize a portrait of President Woolsey of Yale, which he had painted for the University Club. He had copied it from a sketch he had made in a day's run up to New Haven and back. I said, 'It's a fine portrait, Eastman, but it's not as fine as the sketch.' 'That's so,' he answered, 'but I'll be damned if you can have the sketch.'"
Theodore Dwight Woolsey (1801–1889). Tenth president of Yale College, 1846–1871. Graduated Yale in 1820, became chair of Greek at Yale in 1831. After assuming the presidency, took over the department of history, political science, and international law. As president he oversaw a notable raise in standards, installation of new department chairs, increase in tuition, new university buildings, and conferral of the first PhD, among other contributions. Son of William W. Woolsey.
White, Terry James. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1967–.
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