Johnson’s daughter, Ethel, was born in May 1870, and it is not surprising that Johnson would use her (but not exclusively) as a model for the many pictures of young girls in interiors—playing with dolls, warming their hands by a stove, reading, sleeping. Such pictures often include the same furniture, such as the prie dieu (church prayer bench or kneeler) seen in Family Cares and The Tea Party. Because they were genre paintings, not portraits, Johnson freely renders the facial features. Thus, it is not surprising that for paintings done circa 1873, the bodily types of the girls look like three-year-olds; whereas those done circa 1878, look more like eight-years-olds. —PH
National Academician Database, accessed April 12, 2021: "Based on a drawing that he made while living and working in The Hague during the early 1850s, Eastman Johnson's 'The Art Lover' depicts a Dutch girl's aesthetic education from a book of landscape prints. James A. Suydam's purchase of Johnson's painting after what is believed to be its first exhibition in 1859 illustrates Suydam's interest in Dutch culture and his own Dutch heritage. The subject's introspection and the composition's rich contrasts of light and dark are aspects of the Dutch visual tradition that influenced both Johnson and Suydam."
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See all Prints after Works by Johnson.