In addition to his scenes of everyday life and portraits of people, Johnson created images of historical events and figures from works of literature, drama, and music. For example, “Carry Me, and I’ll Drum You Through” was inspired by an incident from the Battle of Antietam, 1862, and Membership Vote at the Union League Club, May 11, 1876, recorded a contentious meeting in which he participated much later. His Marguerite, Cosette, and Minnehaha are personifications of fictional heroines from novels and poetry. His Boy Lincoln represents both the future United States president and the archetypical American youth who, with determination and hard work, could succeed. Johnson rendered several of these imaginative images as both paintings and drawings. These literary and historical works evince both his personal interest in those subjects and his awareness of their popularity with the broad public. —AM
MacGibeny, 2022: This drawing has the same composition as Johnson's Sitting Ojibwe Woman of 1857 and Indian Girl of 1864. Like Indian Girl, made years after Johnson depicted Ojibwe people from life in Minnesota Territory, this drawing likely was inspired by the figure of Minnehaha in the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem, "The Song of Hiawatha," 1855.
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