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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: Reproduced by permission
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. 31.1.112
Baur no. 218
John Stewart Kennedy
Bowdoin College Museum of Art title: Portrait of John Stuart [sic] Kennedy
Alternate titles: John S. Kennedy; John Stuart [sic] Kennedy
c.1886
Oil on canvas
24 1/8 x 20 1/8 in. (61.3 x 51.1 cm)
Initialed lower right in gray paint: E. J.
Provenance
Eastman Johnson estate/Mrs. Eastman Johnson, New York, 1906 (by bequest)
Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, September 21, 1910 (by purchase)
Exhibitions
1975a Bowdoin College Museum
Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Morrell Gymnasium, Brunswick, Maine, Maine Art '75: Maine Artists of the Past, August 9–10, 1975.
1975b Bowdoin College Museum
Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, Nineteenth Century American Paintings at Bowdoin College, November 4, 1975–March 7, 1976. (Exhibition catalogue: Bowdoin College Museum 1974). Traveled to: William Benton Museum of Art, Storrs, Connecticut, January 19–March 7, 1976; University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
References
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. 70, no. 218, as John S. Kennedy.
Burke 1981
Burke, Margaret R. Handbook of the Collections. Brunswick, ME: Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 1981, p. 124.
Sitter Biography
Sitter: Kennedy, John Stewart
Biography:

John Stewart Kennedy (1830–1909). Member of the Union League Club from 1871 until his death.

White, Terry James. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1967–.

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Kennedy, John Stewart
Keywords
Record last updated July 29, 2021. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "John Stewart Kennedy, c.1886 (Hills no. 31.1.112)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=578 (accessed on March 29, 2024).