Catalogue Entry
Like many artists in the nineteenth century, Johnson often did paintings of “types” that are actually identifiable portraits. For example, the painting John F. Sylvia shows a Nantucket miller in his barn looking up from his account books to look out the window. Called at one time The Falling Market, the subject suggests a man perhaps assessing his position in the economy in the early years of the 1870s when a recession gripped the nation. —PH
MacGibeny, 2021: Walton's reference to an "old silk high hat" suggests that the subject likely is related to Johnson portraits in which a top hat is featured, most notably those of Captain Nathan A. Manter and Captain Myrick.
William Walton, "Eastman Johnson, Painter," Scribner's Magazine, September 1906, p. 271: "The happy combination of right feeling and sound technique is manifest in all the details: the respectable old silk high hat which constitutes so important an incident in several of the best of his Nantucket scenes would have been fatal to the ordinary genre painter—it is dignifiedly hospitable in the 'Glass with the Squire,' gravely stern (but not overwhelmingly so) in the 'Reprimand,' genuinely pathetic in 'Contemplation' and the 'Embers.' But seldom has so unimportant a baggage played such an important role in art."
Charles C. Myrick (1797–1883). Captain of the Nantucket coastal trading ship Abel Hoyt, 1854.
Captain Nathan H. Manter (1818–1897). “The most famous of the old Nantucket steam-ship captains, retiring from service in 1891, having been employed on Island steamers about forty years, thirty of which were on the Island Home” [Letter from Richard C. Kugler, Director, Whaling Museum, January 27, 1969, to Mr. W. Myron Owen]. Erroneously reported as killed by a whale in 1851 [1907 Sale Cat. no. 53, Captain Coleman].
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