Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné

Patricia Hills, PhD, Founder and Director | Abigael MacGibeny, Project Manager and Co-Author

Catalogue Entry

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Image courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art

[ 26.6 Nantucket Portraits and Types ]

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26.6 Nantucket Portraits and Types

Like many artists in the nineteenth century, Johnson often did paintings of “types” that are actually identifiable portraits. For example, the painting John F. Sylvia shows a Nantucket miller in his barn looking up from his account books to look out the window. Called at one time The Falling Market, the subject suggests a man perhaps assessing his position in the economy in the early years of the 1870s when a recession gripped the nation. —PH

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Hills no. 26.6.1

Baur no. 359

Zenas M. Coleman

Metropolitan Museum of Art title: A Fisherman

Alternate titles: Captain Coleman; Coleman: A Fisherman; Head of a Man; Head of a Man (after a sketch of Capt. Coleman)

c.1880

Locale: Nantucket, Massachusetts

Ink wash on fine canvas

9 x 8 3/4 in. (22.9 x 22.2 cm) (irregular)

Neither signed nor dated

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1946 (46.22.1)

Provenance

Albert Rosenthal, New Hope, Pennsylvania, until 1939

Estate of Albert Rosenthal, with Albert Duveen, New York

Albert Duveen, New York, and M. Knoedler & Co., New York, February 8, 1946

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, January 1946 (by purchase)

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. 32, as Head of a Man, [not hung, according to Frick Art Reference Library copy of annotated exh. cat.] 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. 359, as Head of a Man.

Crosby 1944

Crosby, Everett U. Eastman Johnson at Nantucket: His Paintings and Sketches of Nantucket People and Scenes. Nantucket, MA, 1944, p. 16, no. C.34, as Head of a Man (after a sketch of Capt. Coleman).

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. 31, as A Fisherman.

M. Knoedler & Co. 1946b

Sales book. New York: M. Knoedler & Co., 1946. Sale catalogue, p. 37.

Hills Examination/Opinion

Examination date(s): 1971-03-09; 2016-11-03

Examination notes: 1971-03-09: Toothless figure.

2016-11-03: Ink wash on fine canvas; no pencil. Seems spontaneous.

Sitter Biography

Sitter: Coleman, Zenas M.

Biography:

Captain Zenas M. Coleman (1815–1878). Whaling ship captain. According to Michael Harrison, Nantucket Historical Association, Coleman was “the last man to command a whaling voyage from Nantucket. In 1876 he became keeper of the Quaise Asylum (poor house), where Johnson met retired sailor and rigger Robert Ratliff, likely among others.”

Coleman, Zenas M.

Keywords

Portrait pose:
- Head »
- Portrait »
Occupations:
- Whaling captains »
Subject matter:
- Nantucket types »

Record last updated February 8, 2022. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.

Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "Zenas M. Coleman, c.1880 (Hills no. 26.6.1)." In Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=967 (accessed on May 2, 2025).