Catalogue Entry
Paintings by Johnson with a Later Additional Hand are not collaborations, but tend to be heavily restored paintings. They have been overpainted since their original creation to such an extent that another hand is visible in the work. The heaviest restorations are seen in three portraits currently or formerly owned by The Brook, New York, which are believed to have been left unfinished at the time of Johnson’s death and subsequently completed by painter, printmaker, and art restorer Charles X. Harris (1854–1936).
MacGibeny, 2021: The 1910 inventory of the art collection of The Brook, New York, lists this painting as being by Eastman Johnson and C. X. Harris. Charles X. Harris (1854–1936) was a painter, printmaker, and art restorer. According to Richard Saunders, author of The Brook Collection, 2005, portraits with that attribution apparently were left unfinished at the time of Johnson’s death and completed by Harris. This portrait likely was sold by The Brook in the 1940s or 1950s with other paintings in its collection.
This portrait is posthumous, made after Arthur's death in 1886. There is a chance that it could have been made from a photograph similar to the one that Johnson used to make his three-quarter-length portrait of Arthur.
Chester Alan Arthur (1829–1886). Twenty-first president of the United States (1881–1885).
White, Terry James. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1967–.
- Portrait pose:
- Occupations:
- Posthumous: