loading loading
Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné
Patricia Hills, PhD, Founder and Director | Abigael MacGibeny, MA, Project Manager

Catalogue Entry

enlarge
Photo: Courtesy of the Frick Art Reference Library
[ 43.3 U.S. Early Portrait Drawings, Women ]info
⊠
43.3 U.S. Early Portrait Drawings, Women

Johnson's earliest recorded portrait drawings of women are dated 1845: his portrait of Dolley Madison that indicates the setting and one of his older sister Judith which shows head and neck only. Unlike the portraits of men, his portraits of women are softer in light-dark chiaroscuro and do not exhibit the muscular structure of the face as do those of men. Johnson consolidated his draughtsman’s talents during his sojourn in Boston, where he painted Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his circle. He took about three days to complete a charcoal portrait. The style of the time was to present portraits in oval frames. 

See Technical Information on Johnson's Practices for a discussion of charcoal, black chalk, crayon, and pastel. —PH

View all works in this theme »

Hills no. 43.3.18
Baur no. 369
Elizabeth Marsten Davis Sturgis
Alternate titles: A Woman; Head of a Lady; Portrait of a Woman
c.1848
Charcoal heightened with white on brown paper
9 1/4 x 7 1/4 in. (23.5 x 18.4 cm)
Inscribed on verso: Eastman Johnson
Present whereabouts unknown
Description / Remarks

MacGibeny, 2022: This previously anonymous sitter has been identified here as Elizabeth Marsten Davis Sturgis based on the similarity of her appearance and affect to the known portrait of Sturgis owned by the Sturgis Library, Barnstable, Massachusetts.

Provenance
Likely Eastman Johnson estate/Mrs. Eastman Johnson, New York, 1906 (by bequest)
Albert Rosenthal, New Hope, Pennsylvania, until 1939 (likely by purchase from Mrs. Johnson in 1915)
Estate of Albert Rosenthal, with Albert Duveen, New York
Albert Duveen, New York, and M. Knoedler & Co., New York, February 8, 1946 (as A Woman)
M. Knoedler & Co., New York, June 27, 1956 (by purchase of Albert Duveen's 1/2 share)
Paul David Magriel, New York, February 15, 1963 (by purchase)
Present whereabouts unknown
Exhibitions
1946 M. Knoedler & Co.
M. Knoedler & Co, New York, Paintings and Drawings by Eastman Johnson, January 7–26, 1946. (Exhibition catalogue: M. Knoedler & Co. 1946), no. 14, as A Woman. Traveled to: The California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, March 1946 (California Palace 1946).
References
Baur 1940
Baur, John I. H. An American Genre Painter: Eastman Johnson, 1824–1906. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, 1940. Exhibition catalogue (1939 Brooklyn Museum), p. 77, no. 369, as Head of a Lady.
M. Knoedler & Co. 1946
Paintings and Drawings by Eastman Johnson. New York: M. Knoedler & Co., 1946. Exhibition catalogue (1946 M. Knoedler & Co.), n.p., no. 14, as A Woman.
Sturgis, Elizabeth Marston Davis
Keywords
Record last updated April 3, 2022. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "Elizabeth Marsten Davis Sturgis, c.1848 (Hills no. 43.3.18)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=958 (accessed on April 29, 2024).