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
MacGibeny, 2021: Although Baur reported an inscribed date of 1857, he noted that "The present owners [who were daughters of the sitter] state that the date on the picture is erroneous and that it was executed in 1877." The Everson Museum of Art also dates their Johnson portrait of the sitter's wife, Charlotte May Wilkinson, as 1877. According to a 1976 letter in the museum's archives from Charlotte Wilson, granddaughter of the sitters, to her cousin Henry Bragdon, Johnson painted this portrait of Alfred Wilkinson, two portraits of Charlotte May Wilkinson, and a portrait of their son Alfred Wilkinson, Jr. at the same time.
See the linked Century Association photograph of Alfred Wilkinson for his likeness in 1873, at age 42.
Alfred Wilkinson (1831–1886). May have been a lawyer to Charles O’Conor [Charles O'Conor letter, 1873]. Son of John Wilkinson, who named the original village of Syracuse, New York after an ancient city in a poem. The Wilkinson Family was related to Johnson’s family by marriage. Johnson was a seconder of Wilkinson for membership in the Century Association.
- Portrait pose:
- Portrait sitter families: