Catalogue Entry
Johnson made several paintings in collaboration with his fellow American artists Louis Rémy Mignot (1831–1870), Worthington Whittredge (1820–1910), and Jervis McEntee (1828–1891). All three are best known as Hudson River School landscape painters; Johnson painted the figures that people their landscapes and interiors.
Johnson’s earliest collaborations were with Mignot: first in The Hague, where they had met during Johnson’s stay, 1851–1855 (Poort van een Kastel bij Winter [Doorway of a Castle in Winter], c.1851–52), and later in America, when Mignot was developing sketches he had made during his 1857 trip to Ecuador with Frederic Church (Street View in Guayaquil, 1859).
Johnson and McEntee were close confidants. They socialized, traveled together, and exchanged letters across decades; Johnson makes many appearances in McEntee’s diaries. Together, they painted Landscape with Figures, c. 1862 and Children in the Wood (Percival P. and Madeleine Baxter), 1882.
Johnson and Whittredge were longtime friends as well. As young men they lived together in Düsseldorf where both were studying painting, and there worked together in Emanuel Leutze’s studio on Leutze’s monumental painting Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851. Later in America, c. 1864–65, they collaborated on the interior scenes An Old New England Kitchen and Sunday Morning.
Johnson’s relationships with these artists were mutually beneficial, personally and professionally, and the works benefited from the artists’ complementary strengths. —AM
MacGibeny, 2021: Johnson's friend, fellow artist, and collaborator on this painting, Jervis McEntee, wrote about its creation in his journal entries of March and April 1882:
"Wednesday 22. Eastman came in and talked with me about painting a picture with him, portraits of two children in a wood, I to paint a landscape. He has [undeciphered] the man who lives in Portland that he will do it for $1000, a picture 30 inches high. I told him he might give me what he chose for my part."
"Thursday 23. Commenced the portrait picture and worked all day on it. I hope I will work with interest and make a good thing of it. I would like to get in the way of painting pictures with Johnson."
"Tuesday 28. Painted on the picture which Eastman and I are to paint together."
"Friday 31. …Painted on my Johnson picture. Eastman came in early in the afternoon and we had a long talk…Likes what I have done and tells me to go on and finish it. Says it will sell even if this man doesn’t want it."
"Saturday Apr. 1. 1882. Painted on my Johnson picture until afternoon…"
"Tuesday 4. Painted all day on my Johnson picture."
"Saturday 8. A warm day. I painted on the Johnson picture and just before noon Eastman came in. He liked the picture and told me to send it up to his room and if the man in Portland did not take it he thought it would sell. The trouble is I don’t know when he will paint the figures."
"Friday 28. …we went to Eastman Johnson’s. He had heard from the Portland man for whom I painted the wood interior as a background for the portraits of his children and he doesn’t want it, about as I expected. Everything goes wrong with me this winter."
The father of the children, James Phinney Baxter, declined to purchase this collaborative painting. (An 1883 exhibition review criticized it harshly: "It seemed hardly necessary that two well-known artists need have co-operated to make so poor a canvas.") However, Baxter purchased Johnson's subsequent solo version, now at Bowdoin College, in which the children assume a larger scale within the composition.
Percival Proctor Baxter (1876–1969). Governor of Maine, 1921–1925. Known for the thousands of acres he purchased and gave to Maine (Baxter State Park), which includes Mt. Katahdin. Son of James Phinney Baxter and Mehitable Cummings Proctor Baxter; brother of Madeline Baxter, with whom he was portrayed by Johnson.
Madeline Baxter (1879–1938). Daughter of James Phinney Baxter and Mehitable Cummings Proctor Baxter; sister of Percival Proctor Baxter, with whom she was portrayed by Johnson.
- Portrait sitter families:
- Occupations: