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

Catalogue Entry

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Photo: Courtesy of New York State Museum, Albany, New York
Amos Richards Eno, 1899 (Hills no. 31.1.70). Detail
Detail
Photo: Patricia Hills
Amos Richards Eno, 1899 (Hills no. 31.1.70). Inscription
Inscription
Photo: Patricia Hills
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. 31.1.70
Baur no. 182
Amos Richards Eno
Alternate titles: Amos Eno; Amos R. Eno
1899
Oil on canvas
52 x 35 in. (132.1 x 88.9 cm)
Signed and dated lower left: E. Johnson/1899 [As in other Johnson paintings of the 1880s and 1890s, the date has a flat top, and in this case, bottom]
Description / Remarks

New York State Museum object description, 2013: "The Amos Eno portrait is oil on canvas and depicts Eno as a clean-shaven male with graying hair wearing a dark double-breasted suit with a black silk bow-tie cravat in 3/4 view."

Markings
Plaque on front of frame: AMOS. R. ENO/PRESENTED BY HIS FAMILY/Painted in 1899 by Eastman Johnson
Provenance
Eno Family (by commission)
Chamber of Commerce, State of New York, by 1940
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)
Exhibitions
1899a Century Association
Century Association, New York, April 1, 1899, as Amos Eno.
References
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. 55, no. 176, illus.
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. 68, no. 182, as Amos R. Eno.
Douglass 1999
Douglass, Julie M. "Lifetime Exhibition History." In Eastman Johnson: Painting America, by Teresa A. Carbone and Patricia Hills. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum of Art, in association with Rizzoli International Publications, 1999. Exhibition catalogue, p. 265, as Amos Eno.
Kusserow 2013
Kusserow, Karl. Picturing Power: Portraiture and Its Uses in the New York Chamber of Commerce. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013, pp. 286–87.
Hills Examination / Opinion
Examination date(s): 2018-06-25
Sitter Biography
Sitter: Eno, Amos Richards
Biography:

Amos Richards Eno (1810–1898). Real estate investor who began his career as a wholesale dry goods merchant and founded Second National Bank.

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

Eno, Amos Richards
Keywords
Record last updated September 30, 2022. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "Amos Richards Eno, 1899 (Hills no. 31.1.70)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=549 (accessed on March 28, 2024).