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: Johnson painted this self-portrait over a Dutch bust-length portrait, which is revealed in the linked x-radiography images. The subject of the Dutch portrait is unidentified, and it is not known whether the Dutch portrait was made by Johnson.
Brooklyn Museum website, accessed May 11, 2020: "In this self-portrait, Eastman Johnson labors over a desk in a warmly lit room, most likely his Manhattan studio on Washington Square. The painting’s dark palette and quiet mood recall seventeenth-century Dutch genre paintings, whose style Johnson absorbed while studying at The Hague in the Netherlands. Some of the small framed paintings in the background were probably acquired during the artist’s time abroad, and the canvas itself is an artifact from that period of his life: x-radiographs reveal that Johnson painted this work over a copy of a Dutch portrait."
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).
- Portrait pose:
- Portrait sitter families:
- Image type: