Catalogue Entry
Johnson made several paintings in collaboration with his fellow American artists Louis Rémy Mignot (1831–1870), Worthington Whittredge (1820–1910), and Jervis McEntee (1828–1891). All three are best known as Hudson River School landscape painters; Johnson painted the figures that people their landscapes and interiors.
Johnson’s earliest collaborations were with Mignot: first in The Hague, where they had met during Johnson’s stay, 1851–1855 (Poort van een Kastel bij Winter [Doorway of a Castle in Winter], c.1851–52), and later in America, when Mignot was developing sketches he had made during his 1857 trip to Ecuador with Frederic Church (Street View in Guayaquil, 1859).
Johnson and McEntee were close confidants. They socialized, traveled together, and exchanged letters across decades; Johnson makes many appearances in McEntee’s diaries. Together, they painted Landscape with Figures, c. 1862 and Children in the Wood (Percival P. and Madeleine Baxter), 1882.
Johnson and Whittredge were longtime friends as well. As young men they lived together in Düsseldorf where both were studying painting, and there worked together in Emanuel Leutze’s studio on Leutze’s monumental painting Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851. Later in America, c. 1864–65, they collaborated on the interior scenes An Old New England Kitchen and Sunday Morning.
Johnson’s relationships with these artists were mutually beneficial, personally and professionally, and the works benefited from the artists’ complementary strengths. —AM
MacGibeny, 2021: The farmer that Johnson added to this painting resembles the subject in Johnson's Study of a Man and Old Man Reading. The kitchen is similar to the one in Johnson's The Other Side of Susan Ray's Kitchen.
American Art Association sale catalogue, 1891: "This picture is the joint production of two artists who are distinguished members of the National Academy of Design in New York. It shows the interior of a New England kitchen. This portion was painted from nature by Mr. Whittredge. Into it Mr. Johnson has introduced an old farmer in his Sunday attire, who, sitting at a table under the window, reads from the family Bible to his wife."
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