Catalogue Entry
Johnson did few landscapes. Of those he did, he seems never to have sent them out on exhibition. The first landscapes were done early on in his European sojourn. Upon returning to the United States he painted a few landscape scenes around Mount Vernon and also views of the settlements around Lake Superior where he traveled in 1856. Later, in the 1860s, he made intimate views on his trips into nature, probably done with men friends in the summers. The few that exist show sunlight falling on paths that lead through woodland trees or suggest a haze on quiet lakes. None of them are dramatic views of mountains or rivers. —PH
American Art Association sale catalogues, 1917 and 1918: "An American farm landscape with a pool in which ducks are swimming in the foreground, a pasture with willow trees on the left, and a barn, a great elm, and two other smaller trees on the borders of the pasture. Several cows and some chickens are in a field on the right, and beyond lies a stretch of country with a distant line of hills. A summer sky of blue with white clouds indicates the season, and sunlight casts shadows across the foreground."