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

Catalogue Entry

enlarge
Photo: Dedra Walls, courtesy the Milwaukee Art Museum
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

View all works in this theme »

Hills no. 31.1.119
Baur no. 221
Frederick Layton
Layton Art Collection Inc. title: Portrait of Frederick Layton
1893
Oil on canvas
78 1/4 x 48 1/4 in. (198.8 x 122.6 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: E. Johnson/1893 [As in other Johnson paintings of the 1880s and 1890s, the date has a flat top]
Provenance
Marshall and Ilsley Bank, Milwaukee, 1893
Layton Art Collection Inc., Milwaukee, 1893 (by gift)
Exhibitions
1893b Century Association
Century Association, New York, February 4, 1893, [possibly, as Frederick Layton].
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. 221, as Frederick Layton.
Milwaukee Art Museum 1988
Frederick Layton and His World. Milwaukee, WI: Milwaukee Art Museum, 1988.
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 [possibly, as Frederick Layton].
Sitter Biography
Sitter: Layton, Frederick
Biography:

Frederick Layton (1827–1919).

Layton, Frederick
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. "Frederick Layton, 1893 (Hills no. 31.1.119)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=585 (accessed on March 29, 2024).