Catalogue Entry
Johnson’s paintings of women are often his best portraits, exhibiting a range of techniques and emphasizing their intelligent faces even when enwrapped in sumptuous fabrics, such as we see in Edwina Booth. —PH
MacGibeny, 2021: In 1976, the Everson Museum undertook to identify the sitters in this portrait, then titled Portrait of a Lady, and their Portrait of a Man, both Eastman Johnson paintings donated by Louise Wilkinson Wilson in 1926. They ran an article in the Syracuse Herald-Journal with the headline "Everson has the faces: Who has the names?"
Robert Earle Graham, a researcher who had an academic friendship with a member of the Wilkinson family, took the challenge and corresponded with members of the family in order to ascertain the sitters' identities for the museum. Charlotte May Wilson, daughter of the donor, confirmed that the woman was her grandmother Charlotte May Wilkinson and that the man was unknown.
According to a letter from Wilson, c. February 26, 1976, the family disliked this portrait of her grandmother because it omitted her eyeglasses. For that reason, they had donated the portrait to the Everson Museum without her name attached, and instead it was titled Portrait of a Lady. A second portrait by Johnson, in which he included her eyeglasses, stayed longer in the family before being given to the Smith College Museum of Art.
Johnson portrayed one other sitter both with and without glasses: Augustus Schell.
Although this portrait is not dated, Graham's research summary in the Everson Museum files states: "This portrait is one of two executed by Eastman Johnson in the year 1877 of Mrs. Charlotte May Wilkinson, who lived at 157 James Street, Syracuse, New York, at the time."
Charlotte May Wilkinson (1833–1909). Daughter of “Rev. Samuel Joseph May, noted abolitionist and preacher; and a first cousin, through her father's sister, of the noted writer of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott. Through marriage she was also related to…Johnson, as her brother married Johnson's sister Harriet” [Everson Museum Archives]. Wife of Alfred Wilkinson.
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