In addition to his scenes of everyday life and portraits of people, Johnson created images of historical events and figures from works of literature, drama, and music. For example, “Carry Me, and I’ll Drum You Through” was inspired by an incident from the Battle of Antietam, 1862, and Membership Vote at the Union League Club, May 11, 1876, recorded a contentious meeting in which he participated much later. His Marguerite, Cosette, and Minnehaha are personifications of fictional heroines from novels and poetry. His Boy Lincoln represents both the future United States president and the archetypical American youth who, with determination and hard work, could succeed. Johnson rendered several of these imaginative images as both paintings and drawings. These literary and historical works evince both his personal interest in those subjects and his awareness of their popularity with the broad public. —AM
"The January Century Club Exhibition," The Art Journal, 1875, refers to "a new painting by Mr. Eastman Johnson, of 'Margaret at the Spinning-wheel,' a life-size figure of a brown-eyed girl. The pictures of this artist that have lately been seen in public have been usually genre pictures, and many of them of cabinet size. 'Margaret,' at the first view, shows very strongly in its general characteristics the influence of Jules Breton and of Bouguereau. Each of these artists has his individual manner of painting flesh, but in the colours of this picture Mr. Johnson has not departed from the palette he always, we believe, is accustomed to use. The shadows around the eyes are of the same purple-brown, the half-tints are of pearl-grey, giving tints much like maroon velvet, and the lightest hue of dove-coloured satin, and these two prevailing shades form a lovely background on which Mr. Johnson dapples on the pink tints of a lip, an ear, or the shell-like purity of a nostril. The forms in this picture of Margaret are very simple. Over her brown hair she wears a stiff lace cap with long lappets, with crimped lace around the edge. Every person familiar with Holland or Belgium will recall just such caps as these, heirlooms of exquisite material that have descended from mother to daughter, and which great market-days and festivals bring out in full force in the churches and public squares. Against her brown hair, under her cap, appear two "plaques" of gold, which we have usually seen worn low down on the forehead, and completely hiding the front hair; but which, as Mr. Johnson has made it, is vastly more becoming, showing the soft waves of hair as it starts from Margaret's temples. The rest of the dress is arranged in simple masses, of flat forms, in light and shade, but these masses are of great richness of colour, and the blue-green of her dress is in agreeable harmony with her soft skin."
- Subject matter: