loading loading
Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné
Patricia Hills, PhD, Founder and Director | Abigael MacGibeny, Project Manager and Co-Author

Catalogue Entry

enlarge
Photo: The Trustees of the Colt Bequest, Inc.
Caldwell Hart Colt, 1894 (Hills no. 31.1.44). Inscription
Inscription
Photo: The Trustees of the Colt Bequest, Inc.
[ 31.1 U.S. Portraits, Men ]info
⊠
31.1 U.S. Portraits, Men

When Johnson returned to the United States, he not only painted genre paintings but he also continued to paint portraits, which gave him a steady income. After 1880 Johnson turned to portraiture almost exclusively. During the 1880s and 1890s he painted businessmen, lawyers, university presidents, and three U.S. presidents from life. At times he also painted their wives and children.

He was also commissioned to paint posthumous portraits, often from photographs. These portraits by and large do not have the sparkle and active brushwork of those done from life. It seems that the demand for portraits of business and civic leaders (and members of exclusive men’s clubs) was so high that portrait painters would often make copies of each other’s paintings to satisfy the market for such images. In many instances, it has been difficult to render opinions for such paintings. —PH

View all works in this theme »

Hills no. 31.1.44
Caldwell Hart Colt
Alternate title: Portrait of Caldwell Hart Colt
1894
Oil on canvas
85 x 66 in. (215.9 x 167.6 cm)
Signed and dated lower left: E. Johnson/1894 [As in other Johnson paintings of the 1880s and 1890s, the "8" has a flat top]
The Trustees of the Colt Bequest Inc., Hartford, Connecticut
Description/Remarks

MacGibeny, 2021: Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt, widow of firearms manufacturer Samuel Colt, commissioned Johnson to paint this portrait of her son, Caldwell Hart Colt, who had drowned in 1894 at the age of 35. Johnson painted Colt, an inventor and yachtsman, from a photograph taken on the deck of his ship, The Dauntless. The painting hung in the Caldwell Hart Colt Memorial Parish House, which Mrs. Colt had erected across from the Church of the Good Shepherd in Hartford, Connecticut, before it was moved to Armsmear, the former Colt Mansion, also in Hartford.

There may be a genealogical connection between this sitter and the sitter in Johnson's 1855 drawing Miss Brinkley, referred to in an alternate title as "later Mrs. Colt."

Provenance
Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt, Hartford, Connecticut, 1894 (by commission)
The Trustees of the Colt Bequest Inc., Hartford, Connecticut
References
Nelke 1895
Nelke, D. I. Illustrated American Biography; Containing Memoirs, and Engravings and Etchings of Representative Americans. Vol. 4. New York and Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1895, p. 184, "On one side of the hall [of the Caldwell Colt Memorial Parish House, erected by his mother Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt] is a tribune, containing memorial inscriptions and a full-length portrait of Commodore Colt, painted by Eastman Johnson".
Hart 1898
Hart, Rev. Samuel, D. D. In Memoriam: Samuel Colt and Caldwell Hart Colt. Springfield, MA: Clifton Johnson, 1898, n.p. "The recess of this tribune, the special memorial in the building, is the most striking feature of the whole structure. It contains a full-length portrait of Commodore Colt by Eastman Johnson; he is represented as standing on the deck of the Dauntless, in yachting costume, with a sailor at the wheel".
Hosley 1996
Hosley, William. Colt: The Making of an American Legend. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, in association with the Wadsworth Atheneum, 1996, pp. 161, 163, 208, fig. 113, as Portrait of Caldwell Hart Colt.
Wallach 1998
Wallach, Alan. "Col. Colt's Ambiguous Legacy; or When I Hear the Word 'Revolver,' I Reach for My Culture." American Quarterly 50, no. 3 (January 1998), pp. 614–15.
Sitter Biography
Sitter: Colt, Caldwell Hart
Biography:

Caldwell Hart Colt (1858–1894). Yachtsman. Son of Colonel Samuel Colt and Elizabeth H. Jarvis Colt. Vice-commodore of the New York Yacht Club (1888) and commodore of the Larchmont Yacht Club, 1892–1893. 

Keywords
Record last updated March 22, 2022. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "Caldwell Hart Colt, 1894 (Hills no. 31.1.44)." In Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=1725 (accessed on May 11, 2025).