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
MacGibeny, 2022: Johnson made his first version of this drawing, Sitting Ojibwe Woman, in 1857 when he was depicting the Ojibwe people in Minnesota Territory. This version (Indian Girl) and a third version, Minnehaha, were done years later, likely inspired by the figure of Minnehaha in the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem "The Song of Hiawatha," 1855. This drawing would have been a fitting gift for William Cullen Bryant, also a poet.
The Evening Post, New York, January 16, 1865: "The sketches painted by artist-members of the Century Club, for presentation to Mr. [William Cullen] Bryant on his seventieth birthday, were exhibited at the rooms of the Club on Saturday…Eastman Johnson, a crayon drawing, representing an Indian maiden seated on the earth in a sorrowful attitude before what seems a solitary grave…"
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