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
Hills, 2022: Although John I. H. Baur owned and annotated a copy of the catalogue of Johnson's 1907 Estate Sale, he did not include this work in his own 1940 catalogue listing; he must have obtained it after publication.
Richard C. Kugler, ed., New Bedford and Old Dartmouth: a Portrait of a Region's Past: A Bicentennial Exhibition of the Old Dartmouth Historical Society at the Whaling Museum in New Bedford, December 4, 1975–April 18, 1976: “The Island Home [a steamer] and her skipper, Captain Nathan H. Manter, were long considered the finest combination of boat and man ever to ply the waters between New Bedford and the islands. In 1861, when Manter took command of the famous steamer, he was forty-three and had nineteen years as a whaleman behind him. On his retirement in 1891 after thirty years at the helm of Island Home, he estimated that he had rounded Nantucket’s Brant Point forty thousand times, without serious loss or mishap.”
"Signed at the lower right, E. J.
Height, 13 inches; width, 10 inches"
[Annotation: “105.00 / Geo Ainsley? Or Amisley”]
Captain Nathan H. Manter (1818–1897). “The most famous of the old Nantucket steam-ship captains, retiring from service in 1891, having been employed on Island steamers about forty years, thirty of which were on the Island Home” [Letter from Richard C. Kugler, Director, Whaling Museum, January 27, 1969, to Mr. W. Myron Owen]. Erroneously reported as killed by a whale in 1851 [1907 Sale Cat. no. 53, Captain Coleman].
- Portrait pose
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