Catalogue Entry
Left: 1940, courtesy of the Frick Art Reference Library; right: 2021, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
The earliest recorded portrait drawing of a known individual by Johnson is Henry Sewell, done in Augusta, Maine, and dated November 26, 1844. Already in 1844, when Johnson was twenty, this work shows the artist's superb use of charcoal (black chalk) to highlight the lights and shadow that capture the three-dimensionality of his sitter. This talent may have been initiated from the time he worked in a lithography shop in Boston, and also the availability of mezzotints.
The Sewell portrait also shows Johnson’s understanding of anatomy in the sitter’s facial structure. During this period, 1844–1949, Johnson almost always used charcoal (black chalk) for his portraits. Some are half-length portraits including hands, but the majority are heads (and necks) alone. He took about three days to complete a charcoal portrait. The style of the time was to present portraits in oval frames.
See Technical Information on Johnson's Practices for a discussion of charcoal, black chalk, crayon, and pastel. —PH
MacGibeny, 2022: John I. H. Baur did not note any inscription on this drawing (Baur no. 325) in An American Genre Painter: Eastman Johnson, 1824–1906, 1940, although it is plainly visible in the photograph from the National Portrait Gallery. It seems likely that he had referred to the 1940 Frick Art Reference Library photograph of the drawing, which is highly exposed and shows neither the inscription nor the finer details of Johnson's draftsmanship. See the linked image comparing the Frick Art Reference Library and National Portrait Gallery photographs.
National Portrait Gallery object record, January 13, 2020: "Head-length portrait of young adult male facing 3/4ths to right."
John Pendleton Kennedy (1795–1870). Author and essayist [Kennedy 1920], member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland, 1839–1845; Secretary of the Navy, 1852–1853. Wrote Horse-Shoe Robinson (1835), The Life of William Wirt (1849), and Mr. Paul Ambrose's Letters on the Rebellion (1865) [Frick Art Reference Library]. An organizer of the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, to which he bequeathed his library [Kennedy 1920].
White, Terry James. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1967–.
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