Catalogue Entry
Johnson, like other artists, painted himself when not engaged in other projects. In these portraits we see the chronological progression of his physiognomy, especially his facial hair. Sometimes we see the inner man, and at other times we see the man in his environment. The self-portrait he presented to the National Academy of Design when he was inducted in 1859 is the grandest; but the most flamboyant is his self-portrait of 1899, in which he is dressed in the costume he wore at the Twelfth Night celebration at the Century Association. —PH
MacGibeny, 2021: According to the Detroit Institute of Arts, this portrait was listed in the John Hanna Galleries inventory in 1939 as a portrait of Charles Dickens. By the time it was published in the Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts of the City of Detroit in October 1940, it had been reidentified as a self-portrait, likely due to its resemblance to the Johnson self-portrait owned by the National Academy of Design.
Jonathan Eastman Johnson (1824–1906). American portrait and genre painter. Son of Philip Carrigan Johnson and Mary Kimball Chandler Johnson; brother of Reuben, Judith, Mary, Philip, Sarah, Harriet, and Eleanor. Married Elizabeth Williams Buckley (m. 1869); father of Ethel (1870–1931).
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