When Johnson returned from Europe late in 1855 and moved in with his family in Washington, D.C., he began receiving portrait commissions. Like the commissioned drawings done earlier, Johnson generally used charcoal (named in some records as black chalk) with touches of white and created a strong chiaroscuro for his sitters. In his later professional years as a painter of oil few portraits of children are recorded. His art commanded high prices; perhaps families were then reluctant to include their children in sittings for portrait drawings. —PH
MacGibeny, 2022: The existence of this drawing by Johnson is deduced from its reproduction as a photoengraving in Illustrated Art Notes upon the Annual Exhibition of the National Academy of Design, 1883. The front matter of the catalogue specifies that "The illustrations in this book are, in every case, photo-engraved reproductions from drawings by the artists themselves, except those with the *, kindly drawn by Mr. James D. Smillie, N.A." The illustration of Johnson's portrait of Florence Einstein does not have an asterisk, signifying that he drew it himself. See the linked image of the reproduction.
As described on page 55, "No. 348, Portrait of a Child, by Eastman Johnson, N. A., is one of the particularly noteworthy pictures in the exhibition, and Mr. Johnson's sketch well reproduces it—in all but the color and the exceptionally fine technique. The dress and stockings are light blue."
Florence Einstein Seligman Walston (1873–1953). Daughter of David Lewis Einstein and Caroline Einstein; sister of Lewis David Einstein (1877–1967); wife of Theodore David Seligman (m. c. 1893; he died 1907) and Sir Charles Walston, Lord Walston (m. 1909; he died 1927)—in 1918, Charles Waldstein changed his last name to Walston.
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