Catalogue Entry
In addition to his scenes of everyday life and portraits of people, Johnson created images of historical events and figures from works of literature, drama, and music. For example, “Carry Me, and I’ll Drum You Through” was inspired by an incident from the Battle of Antietam, 1862, and Membership Vote at the Union League Club, May 11, 1876, recorded a contentious meeting in which he participated much later. His Marguerite, Cosette, and Minnehaha are personifications of fictional heroines from novels and poetry. His Boy Lincoln represents both the future United States president and the archetypical American youth who, with determination and hard work, could succeed. Johnson rendered several of these imaginative images as both paintings and drawings. These literary and historical works evince both his personal interest in those subjects and his awareness of their popularity with the broad public. —AM
"Editor’s Easy Chair," Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, June 1860: "The 'Margaret' is the Gretchen of Goethe's Faust. She sits at her wheel and has just been singing the spinning song…But in this case the song is sadder than the singer. Her head is turned full toward the spectator as to a window. It is the purest, most loving, most sensitive, and exquisite beauty that you feel in it…The peculiar expression of the figure passing from the girl into the woman, with a kind of shrinking, appealing pathos in the gathering of the shoulders is quite indescribable…Through the window toward which she turns the sunlight streams past her upon the wall behind, surrounding her head with light, and upon the edge of the sunlight on the wall, explaining at once the attitude of the woman and what particular woman it is, you see the nodding cock's feather and half-profile of Mephistopheles. The discordant shadow is slight, doubtless imperceptible to many who merely glance at the picture, but it is the terrible point of the whole—that little spot of significant shade lying upon all that youth, simplicity, and innocent loveliness, as on the creamy cheek and beneath the clustering golden curls of the most beautiful woman the little, half-seen, hectic flush taints all the splendor with foreshadowed death…"
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