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

Catalogue Entry

enlarge
Photo: Courtesy of the Frick Art Reference Library
[ 45.1 U.S. Later Portrait Drawings, Men ]info
⊠
45.1 U.S. Later Portrait Drawings, Men

When Johnson returned from Europe late in 1855 and moved in with his family in Washington, D.C., he began receiving portrait commissions. Like those done earlier, Johnson generally used charcoal (named in some records as black chalk) with touches of white and created a strong chiaroscuro for his sitters. Gradually he moved away from the strong chiaroscuro style he had been using, and his later portraits tend to be sketchier (as was the taste in art at the time) but no less professional. He used pastel to bring in color in some of these portraits. —PH

View all works in this theme »

Hills no. 45.1.23
Baur no. 336
Nelson Appleton Miles
Alternate titles: possibly Gen. Miles; General Miles; General Nelson Appleton Miles
c.1879
Pastel
19 x 13 in. (48.3 x 33 cm)
Initialed lower right: E.J.
Present whereabouts unknown
Provenance
Likely Eastman Johnson estate/Mrs. Eastman Johnson, New York, 1906 (by bequest)
Albert Rosenthal, New Hope, Pennsylvania, by 1923 (likely by purchase from Mrs. Johnson in 1915)
Present whereabouts unknown
Exhibitions
1890 Century Association
Century Association, New York, May 3, 1890, [possibly, as Gen. Miles].
1920 Kennedy Galleries
Kennedy Galleries, New York, Charcoal Drawings of Eminent Americans by Eastman Johnson, June 1920. (Exhibition catalogue: Kennedy Galleries 1920), no. 30, as Nelson Appleton Miles.
1936 Macbeth Gallery
Macbeth Gallery, New York, Exhibition of a Private Collection of Drawings by Eastman Johnson, January 14–February 3, 1936, as General Miles.
References
Kennedy Galleries 1920
Catalogue of an Exhibition of Charcoal Drawings by Eastman Johnson. New York: Kennedy Galleries, 1920. Exhibition catalogue (1920 Kennedy Galleries), p. 8, no. 30, as Nelson Appleton Miles.
Bolton 1923
Bolton, Theodore. Early American Portrait Draughtsmen in Crayon. New York: F. F. Sherman, 1923, p. 40, no. 30.
Comstock 1936
Comstock, Helen. "The Connoisseur in America: Eastman Johnson's Drawings." The Connoisseur 97 (May 1936), p. 278, as General Miles.
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. 75, no. 336, as General Miles.
Sitter Biography
Sitter: Miles, Nelson Appleton
Biography:

General Nelson Appleton Miles (1839–1925). Soldier. Served in Civil and in Indian Wars and was known to drive Chief Sitting Bull across the Canadian frontiers. In 1895 became commander-in-chief of the U.S. Army, just before the war with Spain. Husband of Mary Hoyt Sherman (1842–1904; m. 1869); father of two children.

White, Terry James. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1967–.

Miles, Nelson Appleton
Keywords
Record last updated March 30, 2022. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "Nelson Appleton Miles, c.1879 (Hills no. 45.1.23)." In Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=984 (accessed on May 2, 2025).