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
Baur 1940, pp. 48–49: "Charles Myrick, a Nantucket man, appears in several of Johnson's pictures. The present sketch is a study for The Reprimand, (unlocated but reproduced in S. G. W. Benjamin, 'A Representative American,' Magazine of Art, November, 1882, p. 485). Another version is [Baur] no. 66 [Charles C. Myrick]. Johnson also used Myrick in A Glass with the Squire ([Baur] no. 61) and Embers ([Baur] no. 58…). Two drawings of Myrick are [Baur] no. 338, p. 36, and no. 446, p. 35."
"Signed at the lower left, E. J.
Height, 9 ½ inches; width, 6 inches."
[Annotation: “30.00/ Cogswell”]
Charles C. Myrick (1797–1883). Captain of the Nantucket coastal trading ship Abel Hoyt, 1854.
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