
Some of Johnson’s most memorable paintings were his small scale compositions of family groups. Such works as these, traditionally called “conversation pieces,” trace their pedigree to England and seventeenth-century Holland. They were commissioned group portraits of wealthy patrons as they wanted to be seen, usually surrounded by sumptuous furnishing and a coterie of family and friends. —PH

The Metropolitan Museum of Art website, accessed March 15, 2021: "In 1881, bankers and businessmen were profoundly alarmed by a bill in Congress about the refunding of the national debt. The man at the left on the sofa is Robert W. Rutherford, a relative by marriage of the painter, and the attentive listener beside him is the artist, Samuel W. Rowse. When these responsible citizens were discussing the bill in Johnson's own parlor, he saw in their appearance and attitudes the subject for a picture and made a study before doing this large, finished work."
Samuel Worcester Rowse (1822–1901). American lithographer, illustrator, and painter in Boston. Lifelong friend of Johnson.
White, Terry James. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1967–.
Robert Walter Rutherford (1818–1904). Brother-in-law of Johnson’s wife, Elizabeth Williams Buckley Johnson (husband of her sister Anna Lawrence Buckley, m. 1848).
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