Catalogue Entry
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
Hills, 2022: This drawing likely was done from a photograph after the subject died from drowning in 1887.
The Record, Valparaiso, Chile, November 18, 1887: "I have just heard that it was reported in papers after I left York, in Maine, that little Phillip Johnson was drowned. I cannot believe it, and am going to write his mother, Mrs. Elvira [Elvira Lindsay Johnson], at once to find out. Poor lady, if it is true!" Newspaper reference provided by Nicholas Hanlon.
Phillip L. Johnson (?–1887). Son of Johnson’s brother Philip Carrigan Johnson, Jr.; brother of Vice Admiral Alfred Wilkinson Johnson, Johnson’s nephew and grandfather of Johnson family descendant Valerie Elbrick Hanlon.
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