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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: Yale University Art Gallery
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. 31.1.164
Baur no. 241
Noah Thomas Porter III
Yale University Art Gallery title: Noah Porter (1811–1892), B.A. 1831, M.A. 1834
Alternate titles: Noah Porter; Portrait of the Late Rev. Dr. Porter, Pres. of Yale University; Pres. Porter, Yale College; President Noah Porter of Yale
1882
Oil on canvas
27 3/4 x 22 3/8 in. (70.5 x 56.8 cm)
Signed and dated lower left: E. Johnson 1882
Provenance
Martha Day Porter, until 1922
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, 1923 (by bequest)
Exhibitions
1882c Century Association
Century Association, New York, May 6, 1882, as Pres. Porter, Yale College.
1900a Union League Club of New York
The Union League Club of New York, New York, American Paintings, January 11–13, 1900, no. 4, as Portrait of the Late Rev. Dr. Porter, Pres. of Yale University.
References
Philadelphia Inquirer 1882
"Personal and Political." The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 16, 1882, p. 4: "Eastman Johnson is painting portraits of Presidents Porter, of Yale, and McCosh, of Princeton".
French 1906
French, Edgar. "An American Portrait Painter of Three Historical Epochs." World's Work 13, no. 2 (December 1906), p. 8307, illus., as President Noah Porter of Yale.
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. 71, no. 241, as Noah Porter.
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, pp. 263, 265.
Sitter Biography
Sitter: Porter, Noah Thomas
Biography:

Noah Thomas Porter III (1811–1892). President of Yale, 1871–1886, and chair of moral philosophy and metaphysics. He received distinction through his academic work, his editing, and his numerous contributions to the institution as president, including a doubling of student enrollment, establishment of resources for many departments and chairs, and expansion of graduate schools.

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

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. "Noah Thomas Porter III, 1882 (Hills no. 31.1.164)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=616 (accessed on March 29, 2024).