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
CAPTAIN COLEMAN: “Manter, what did you think when you were in the whale’s jaws?”
CAPTAIN MANTER: “Wal, I thought he’d make about sixty berril.”
Signed at the left, E. J.
Height, 10 inches; width, 8 ½ inches"
[Annotation: “100.00/ Cogswell”]
Captain Zenas M. Coleman (1815–1878). Whaling ship captain. According to Michael Harrison, Nantucket Historical Association, Coleman was “the last man to command a whaling voyage from Nantucket. In 1876 he became keeper of the Quaise Asylum (poor house), where Johnson met retired sailor and rigger Robert Ratliff, likely among others.”
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