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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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07.3 Ojibwe Women

In the summer of 1856—soon after his late 1855 return to the United States from Europe—Johnson traveled West to Superior, Wisconsin, to visit his brother Reuben Johnson, his sister Sarah Osgood Johnson, and her husband William Henry Newton. Superior was a growing town, specifically growing on land that had been Ojibwe territory; as many speculators were doing at that time, Johnson made some real estate investments. While in Superior he painted portraits of family members and other residents. In 1857 he turned down a commission from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to draw a portrait of Longfellow’s daughters in favor of a second trip to Superior and the Lake Superior region, including part of what was then Minnesota Territory. As he wrote to Longfellow on June 3, 1857,

One might reasonably wonder what attraction that wild region can have for an artist, in comparison with such advantages as would result to me from your kind & flattering offer, the patronage of the most celebrated in the most refined of places. Perhaps I cannot entirely justify it, but in a visit to that country last season I found so much of the picturesque, & of a character so much to my taste & in my line, that I then determined to employ this summer or a portion of it in making sketches of Frontier life, a national feature of our present condition & a field for art that is full of interest, & freshness & pleasing nature, & yet that has been but little treated [Quoted Carbone 1999a, p. 36].

That summer Johnson set out with local guide Stephen Bunga to see and depict Ojibwe encampments and people. He created a distinct body of work including eighteen paintings and twenty-five drawings of encampments, individuals, and groups that are an important record of Ojibwe life at that time, as well as Johnson’s interests and developing style. —AM

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Hills no. 7.3.1
1907 Sale no. 3
The Belle of the Chippewas of Grand Portage
1857
Oil
8 1/2 x 6 in. (21.6 x 15.2 cm)
Initialed lower left: E. J.
This catalogue raisonné strives to reproduce the available historical information, as it was written in the period, while acknowledging that readers today may find many of these terms objectionable or racist. Please see the Racist Language/Negative Stereotypes Statement »
Description / Remarks

Hills, 2021: Johnson traveled to Superior, Wisconsin and Minnesota Territory in 1856–57. Although many of his Superior works are dated 1856, there is no evidence that he made any of his works relating to Ojibwe people in 1856.

Although John I. H. Baur owned and annotated a copy of the catalogue of Johnson's 1907 Estate Sale, he did not include this work in his own 1940 catalogue listing; he must have obtained it after publication.

1907 Estate Sale info
No. 3: "This is the head and shoulders of a comely Indian maiden, with large dark eyes, and a mass of black hair closely drawn over her temples and confined by a narrow black ribbon on either side. She wears gold earrings and a necklace of gold beads, and a white kerchief around her shoulders."
"Signed at the lower left, E. J.
Height, 8 ½ inches; width, 6 inches"
[Annotation: “25.00”]
Provenance
Eastman Johnson estate/Mrs. Eastman Johnson, New York, 1906 (by bequest)
[The artist's estate sale, American Art Association, New York, February 26–27, 1907, no. 3 (as The Belle of the Chippewas of Grand Portage)]
Present whereabouts unknown
References
AAA 1907b
Catalogue of Finished Pictures, Studies, and Drawings by the Late Eastman Johnson, N.A. New York: American Art Association, February 1907. Sale catalogue, n.p., no. 3, as The Belle of the Chippewas of Grand Portage.
Keywords
Record last updated April 7, 2022. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "The Belle of the Chippewas of Grand Portage, 1857 (Hills no. 7.3.1)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=72 (accessed on March 28, 2024).