Catalogue Entry
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
Signed LL: “E. Johnson” The image is reversed from the usual portraits Johnson did of Evarts. Although the technique has many of the characteristics of Johnson’s style, the painting is not successful as a portrait. He was, in fact, criticized in his own lifetime for not portraying Evarts as a distinguished person should be.
William Maxwell Evarts (1818–1901). Prominent lawyer and orator who also served as Attorney General of the United States under President Andrew Johnson, 1868–1869; U.S. Secretary of State, 1877–1881; U.S. Senator to New York, 1885–1891 [Rains Galleries auction catalogue, 1936].
White, Terry James. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1967–.
- Portrait pose: