Johnson’s wife, Elizabeth, no doubt turned his attention to representations of women alone—either in interiors or outside. Such women are often lost in thought and suggest sentient beings with an inner life. In my interviews with descendants of Johnson’s siblings, she is presented as an independent woman. Johnson painted her portrait in which she assumes the posture of a woman who thinks on her own (also see theme 31.3). —PH
Hills, 2022: John I. H. Baur likely knew this work because it was photographed at the Brooklyn Museum, where he was head of the Department of Painting and Sculpture from 1936 to 1952, but it is not included in his 1940 catalogue of Johnson's work.
Hills, 2021: John I. H. Baur noted in his Notebook Y at the Archives of American Art, p. 33, that Johnson made three pictures called Devotion. He listed this painting as being dated 1851, an apparent misreading; the date has been corrected to 1861 here.
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