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Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné
Patricia Hills, PhD, Founder and Director | Abigael MacGibeny, Project Manager and Co-Author

Catalogue Entry

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Photo: Courtesy of New York State Museum, Albany, New York
Thomas Butler Coddington, 1886 (Hills no. 31.1.42). Detail
Detail
Photo: Patricia Hills
Thomas Butler Coddington, 1886 (Hills no. 31.1.42). Inscription
Inscription
Photo: Patricia Hills
[ 31.1 U.S. Portraits, Men ]info
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31.1 U.S. Portraits, Men

When Johnson returned to the United States, he not only painted genre paintings but he also continued to paint portraits, which gave him a steady income. After 1880 Johnson turned to portraiture almost exclusively. During the 1880s and 1890s he painted businessmen, lawyers, university presidents, and three U.S. presidents from life. At times he also painted their wives and children.

He was also commissioned to paint posthumous portraits, often from photographs. These portraits by and large do not have the sparkle and active brushwork of those done from life. It seems that the demand for portraits of business and civic leaders (and members of exclusive men’s clubs) was so high that portrait painters would often make copies of each other’s paintings to satisfy the market for such images. In many instances, it has been difficult to render opinions for such paintings. —PH

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Hills no. 31.1.42
Baur no. 170
Thomas Butler Coddington
Alternate title: Thomas B. Coddington
1886
Oil on canvas
27 x 22 in. (68.6 x 55.9 cm)
Signed and dated lower left in red paint over black: E. Johnson/1886 [As in other Johnson paintings of the 1880s and 1890s, the date features a flat top]
New York State Museum, Albany, New York (2003.41.117)
Description/Remarks

Hills, 2018: Older man looking straight at viewer. White hair and generous white moustache. High priest-like collar.

Markings
Plate on frame: Thomas B. Coddington/A Member of the Chamber of Commerce/1858–1886/by Eastman Johnson/Presented by his daughters 1886
Provenance
Daughters of the sitter, 1886
Chamber of Commerce, State of New York, 1886 (by gift)
New York State Museum, Albany, New York, 2003 (by gift from The Partnership for New York City, Inc., with which the Chamber of Commerce merged in 1997)
References
Wilson 1890
Wilson, George, ed. Portrait Gallery of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New-York: Catalogue and Biographical Sketches. New York: Press of the Chamber of Commerce, 1890, p. 7, no. 40, as Thomas B. Coddington.
New York Chamber of Commerce 1924
Catalogue of Portraits in the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York. New York: New York Chamber of Commerce, 1924, p. 35, no. 95.
Baur 1940
Baur, John I. H. An American Genre Painter: Eastman Johnson, 1824–1906. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, 1940. Exhibition catalogue (1939 Brooklyn Museum), p. 67, no. 170, as Thomas B. Coddington.
Hills Examination/Opinion
Examination date(s): 2018-06-25
Sitter Biography
Sitter: Coddington, Thomas Butler
Biography:

Thomas Butler Coddington (1814–1886). Merchant. As owner of T. B. Coddington and Company, with offices in New York and Liverpool, England, amassed considerable wealth as a metals merchant. Daughter Fannie married “Pen” Browning (m. 1887), only child of English poets Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Catalogue of Portraits in the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York. New York: New York Chamber of Commerce, 1924.

Keywords
Record last updated August 28, 2022. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "Thomas Butler Coddington, 1886 (Hills no. 31.1.42)." In Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=529 (accessed on May 2, 2025).