Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné

Patricia Hills, PhD, Founder and Director | Abigael MacGibeny, MA, Project Manager

Catalogue Entry

enlarge

Overall

Photo: Abigael MacGibeny

Detail

Photo: Abigael MacGibeny

Detail

Photo: Abigael MacGibeny

Inscription

Photo: Abigael MacGibeny

[ 45.1 U.S. Later Portrait Drawings, Men ]

⊠

45.1 U.S. Later Portrait Drawings, Men

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

View all works in this theme »

Hills no. 45.1.33

Theodore Dwight Woolsey

Alternate title: Study for Portrait of President Woolsey

c.1885 [?]

Locale: New Haven, Connecticut

Possibly pastel, chalk, and charcoal on paper mounted on canvas

18 x 11 7/8 in. (45.7 x 30.2 cm)

Initialed lower right: E.J./1885 [?—date partially legible]

Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, Gift of Richard Nutt (1998.158)

Description / Remarks

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.'"

Provenance

By descent in the family of the sitter

Richard Nutt, a descendant of the sitter by marriage, until 1998

Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, 1998 (by gift)

References

Holt 1921

Holt, Henry. "Garrulities of an Octogenarian Editor." The Weekly Review 5, no. 113 (July 9, 1921), p. 32: "[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.'".

Hills Examination / Opinion

Examination date(s): July 23, 2014 (Abigael MacGibeny)

Examination notes: Medium appears as velvety as pastel. Charcoal lines visible around sitter's right ear.

Sitter Biography

Sitter: Woolsey, Theodore Dwight

Biography:

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–.

Related work

Woolsey, Theodore Dwight

Keywords

Portrait pose:
- Portrait »
Occupations:
- University presidents »
Subject matter:
- Eyeglasses »
Inscription type:
- Questionable block initials (Block initials, like the ones inscribed on these works, are likely not to have been inscribed by Johnson.) »

Record last updated August 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. "Theodore Dwight Woolsey, c.1885 [?] (Hills no. 45.1.33)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=1275 (accessed on May 6, 2024).