Catalogue Entry
Johnson’s early art training included working in a Boston lithography shop, and hence he knew how to draw on the stone before paper was laid over it and printed. In The Hague, where numerous lithography shops were at his disposal, several of his portraits were executed as lithographs. —PH
Hills, 2022: Johnson had learned lithography in the mid-1840s when he studied at Bufford’s print shop in Boston. Since there were lithography establishments in the Netherlands, he continued this craft for some of his portraits.
MacGibeny, 2022: Joan Macy Kaskell notes in "Eastman Johnson, Lithographer," Imprint, Spring 1997, that this portrait of George Winthrop Folsom's sisters likely was done at the same time as George's, which is inscribed 1853.
Helen Stuyvesant Folsom (1843–1882). Daughter of George Folsom (Chargé d’Affaires to the Netherlands, 1850–1853, when Johnson lived in The Hague, the Netherlands) and Margaret Cornelia Winthrop Folsom; sister of George Winthrop and Margaret Winthrop (all portrayed by Johnson). “...[T]he younger [sister of Margaret Winthrop Folsom], known as Lelly, became a member of a religious sisterhood in England and a founder of the Sisterhood of St. John the Baptist in New York. The family has leather-bound copies of her published poems about her brother's ten children” [Kaskell 1997].
Margaret Winthrop Folsom (1842–1925). Daughter of George Folsom (Chargé d’Affaires to the Netherlands, 1850–1853, when Johnson lived in The Hague, the Netherlands) and Margaret Cornelia Winthrop Folsom; sister of George Winthrop, and Helen Stuyvesant (all portrayed by Johnson).
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