Like many artists in the nineteenth century, Johnson often did paintings of “types” that are actually identifiable portraits. For example, the painting John F. Sylvia shows a Nantucket miller in his barn looking up from his account books to look out the window. Called at one time The Falling Market, the subject suggests a man perhaps assessing his position in the economy in the early years of the 1870s when a recession gripped the nation. —PH
Nantucket Historical Association website, accessed February 26, 2021: "Half-length portrait of an elderly man with long grey hair and beard. Head is dropping forward. He is wearing black overcoat and beaver hat. Man holding ivory and wooden cane in left hand. His mouth is resting on head of cane. Grey neutral background."
Charles C. Myrick (1797–1883). Captain of the Nantucket coastal trading ship Abel Hoyt, 1854.
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