Acknowledgments
We are most grateful to the National Academy of Design for embracing the Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné Project and agreeing to be the long-term steward of the EJCR, the content of which NAD will maintain and periodically update. Director Gregory Wessner and his staff have been most enthusiastic about this endeavor and moving it to completion. Sara Reisman, Chief Curator and Director of NA Affairs, and Blaise Marshall, Communications Manager, were unstinting in preparations for the initial launch of the EJCR with “Paintings.” Subsequently, for the completion of the EJCR with “Drawings and Prints,” we also appreciated the support of Eliza Coviello, Deputy Director; Thomas E. Moore III, Director of Development; and Sophie Bedecarré Ernst, Communications Manager.
Our special appreciation goes to Johnson family descendants who made works and information available to us through the years, up to and including the crucial publication stage.
Many thanks also to our other excellent partners on the project: copyeditor Jessie Sentivan; Erik Schoonhoven, our consultant in the Netherlands; and project assistant Pavla Berghen-Wolf. The brilliant and multi-talented designer Susannah Shepherd of panOpticon, provider of the EJCR database and website, worked with us to design a custom interactive website compatible with the NAD website. —Patricia Hills and Abigael MacGibeny
Patricia Hills's acknowledgments
Abigael MacGibeny's acknowledgments
Patricia Hills's acknowledgments
Many patrons, colleagues, and friends deserve to be acknowledged for their encouragement of the Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné Project. First, I want to thank my dissertation advisors, Professor Robert Goldwater at the Institute of Fine Arts and John I. H. Baur, then the director of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Baur not only read the dissertation but also hired me to be guest curator for the Eastman Johnson retrospective held at the Whitney in 1972 and which traveled to Detroit, Oakland, and Milwaukee. Baur, who had been trained in art history at Princeton and Yale Universities, had mounted the previous Johnson retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1939–40. His checklist of 472 paintings and drawings, published in the Brooklyn Museum’s catalogue, served as the basis for the more than 1,400 entries of the present EJCR; his notebooks at the Archives of American Art provided information on additional artworks that came to light after his publication. More additional works were gleaned from auction house records, exhibition records, museum accession records, diaries of sitters, and letters of Johnson and his friends, as well as works brought to me to examine in the last fifty years.
In the early 1980s in Boston gallerist Robert Vose encouraged me to take my examinations of Johnson works seriously and to create a proper catalogue raisonné based on my examination notes and research cards. Roger Howlett of Childs Gallery offered to accept shipments of Johnson paintings sent for my examinations in Boston; later in the 2010s Adam Adelson of Adelson Galleries/Boston also offered the same services. Adam’s father Warren Adelson, who had earlier opened Adelson Galleries in New York, has been a constant supporter of the EJCR project; Warren encouraged me to apply to the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for American Art and has given me valuable advice over the decades. And for his most generous gifts to both the EJCR Endowment and the EJCR Operating Fund, I send most welcome thanks to Bruce McLanahan, whom I met 50 years ago when I went to his home to examine a painting.
I also want to thank Teresa A. Carbone who invited me to co-curate the Brooklyn Museum’s 1999 Johnson retrospective. At that time I had logged over 1,100 entries for the EJCR and my research contributed to the selection of the works included in that exhibition. Since then the staffs of many museums, some who listened to our ideas about long-term stewardship, brought new works and new information to our attention, and offered advice. At the Brooklyn Museum, Susan Fisher and Margarita Karasoulas along with conservators Josh Summer, Lauren Bradley, Lisa Bruni, and Elyse Driscoll hosted a connoisseurship morning session on Johnson’s paintings and drawings for our EJCR team. We also acknowledge the interest in the EJCR of Michael Ryan, Margi Hofer, and Emily Croll at the New-York Historical Society. Liza Kirwin, Interim Director, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, has been a continuing supporter of my research. The Eastman Johnson Archives will be donated to the Archives of American Art in 2022.
Since the 1970s other art historians and editors have passed along advice and information that has been greatly appreciated: Fred Hills, Leo Steinberg, Roger B. Stein, John Walsh, Jr, Susan Hobbs, Wanda Corn, Alan Wallach, Richard Saunders, Kathleen Foster, Kenneth Myers, Katherine Manthorne, Sarah Cash, Wendy Wick Reaves, Karen Quinn, William Gerdts, and Patricia Johnston. Supportive gallerists and dealers, besides Roger Howlett, Warren and Adam Adelson mentioned above, have been Jonathan Boos, Martha Fleischman, Debra Force, Stuart Feld, Betty Krulik, Paul Worman, and the late Ira Spanierman, John Driscoll, and Ken Lux.
During these years my family and friends served as consultants and drivers. Those who served as drivers were my son Bradford Hills, nephew Hall McCormick, and dear friend Richard Anderson. My son Andrew Whitfield learned art history by accompanying me on my museum trips and always had interesting comments. My daughter Christina Hills, the CEO of Website Creation Workshop, helped secure the URL for the website and consulted with me on website protocols. My greatest gratitude is to my dear late husband Kevin Whitfield who was continuously supportive of my work, by also driving, reading my manuscripts, and taking charge of family matters when I was wrapped up in Johnson scholarship.
Knowledge of the mediums and supports of pictures is important in terms of attribution and dating. I am most grateful to the conservators who answered many of my questions and participated in my examinations. In addition to the conservators at the Brooklyn Museum mentioned above, there are Margaret Holben Ellis of the Institute of Fine Arts Conservation Center, who helped me attribute a pastel to Johnson’s hand, and Stephen Kornhauser of the New-York Historical Society, who answered questions about one of their paintings. And Joyce Hill Stoner, art historian and conservator, has put me in touch with other top conservators of the country.
Johnson unfortunately has few direct descendants, but there are many descendants of his siblings who are proud of their family relationship to Johnson. Several of the living relatives of Johnson have been most helpful by supplying us with biographical information and photographs. My thanks to them. My research was also greatly facilitated by the many private collectors, who collected Johnson because they love his work; they graciously invited me to see the paintings and drawings by Johnson in their homes.
The Catalogue Raisonné Scholars Association has held conferences that were most valuable for us to ascertain “best practices,” and individual members were most responsive to specific questions I posted on the CRSA list-serv.
The Advisors to the project—Brian Allen, Linda Ferber, and Marc Simpson—have helped with the EJCR Project for years. As past curators for major museums, Brian and Marc have organized Johnson exhibitions, and Linda is deeply familiar with his work as a former Chief Curator at the Brooklyn Museum and past director of the New-York Historical Society. The three advised me on our quest for a long-term steward, for fundraising, and for general questions of connoisseurship. I am pleased they will stay connected with the EJCR Project. We also want to thank Erik Schoonhoven, who researched archives in The Netherlands and provided publicity for the project during 2019.
Jeremiah William McCarthy, former curator at NAD, encouraged us to think about the language we were using and that had been historically used to describe people of color in the Americas. After discussions with him, we asked Rika Burnham, Adrienne Childs, Scott Manning Stevens, Jeffrey Stewart, and Alan Wallach to join us as Consultants for Interpretation in addressing issues of language used in the past and today. The Racist Language/Negative Stereotypes Statement is the result of long discussions among us all. On the EJCR website, we have flagged those works in which the language is problematical. Each of these consultants has written a short essay on one of Johnson’s works for the Perspectives on Eastman Johnson series available on the NAD website.
The institutions that offered funds and/or administrative services are the Department of History of Art and Architecture, Boston University (and thanks to Cheryl Crombie for facilitating those funds); the Wyeth Foundation for American Art (two grants); the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for American Art; and the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York. I am especially grateful to the Fenimore’s director Paul D’Ambrosio, who sponsored the Horowitz grant proposal, and to Sarah Wilcox, who facilitated the tracking of finances for that grant. I am also grateful to Kevin Gillis of The Lunder Foundation—Peter and Paula Lunder Family for his encouragement to fundraise for the Endowment Fund for the EJCR.
We are also appreciative of the Donors to the EJCR Endowment Fund.
Finally, I want to thank Abigael MacGibeny for working with me on the EJCR project since 2012. She took initiative to continue the critical art historical research the project needed, including finding new works, identifying sitters, and tracking down works whose whereabouts were unknown. She collaborated with curators, collectors, and archivists across the country. The years from 2019 through 2022 have been especially taxing as she sought to complete each catalogue entry while managing the project to the catalogue's publication as a website. She coordinated the review process and highlighted issues that needed my attention. Her ideas and counsel throughout have helped shape the final form and features that position the EJCR as unique in the field. In short, she and our partnership have been essential to the successful launching of the catalogue raisonné and website. She has my deepest gratitude.
Abigael MacGibeny's acknowledgments
I am indebted to Dr. Patricia Hills for the wonderful opportunity to work with her and help shape a project so important to her. Over the years, as both my advisor at Boston University and director of the Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné, she has generously shared her professional and scholarly insights and encouraged and enabled me to deepen my knowledge. Opportunities to accompany her for personal examinations of works by Johnson have been important experiences. Learning from her is an honor and a pleasure, and delving into the story of each work by Eastman Johnson has rooted me in the field of art history.
Researching Johnson’s works has involved communication and cooperation with hundreds of professionals at museums and other cultural institutions, as well as private collectors who provided information and images. While they cannot all be listed here, I am deeply grateful to all for their kind cooperation.
Some colleagues assisted us repeatedly, sometimes over the course of years, actively offering information, helping to solve mysteries, and hosting our site visits. I would like to recognize in particular Eric Baumgartner and Margot Chvatal, Hirschl & Adler Galleries; Tessa Kansas and Colton Klein (formerly), Sotheby’s; Paige Kestenman, Christie’s; Carey Vose and Courtney Kopplin, Vose Galleries; Mary Adair Dockery, Heritage Auctions; Tim DeWerff, Century Association; Kenneth Myers, Detroit Institute of Arts; Karen Quinn, New York State Museum; Emily Croll, New-York Historical Society; Will Coleman, formerly of the Newark Museum; Kerri Pfister, Frick Art Reference Library; Roberto Ferrari, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University; Amelia Holmes, Nantucket Historical Association; Anne Knutson, independent art historian and curator; James Sousa, Addison Gallery of American Art; Susan Garton, National Portrait Gallery; Anne Halpern, National Gallery of Art; and Wildenstein & Company, Inc.
Finally, my love to my parents, Emilie and Bruce MacGibeny, and to Robert C. Ryan, with gratitude for their encouragement always.