Everything about Eastman Johnson totally explained
Eastman Johnson (
July 29,
1824 -
April 5,
1906) was an
American painter. Best known for his genre paintings, paintings of scenes from everyday life, and his portraits both of everyday people, he also painted portraits of prominent Americans such as
Abraham Lincoln,
Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, and
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. His later works often show the influence of the 17th century Dutch masters whom he studied while living in
The Hague, and he was even known as
The American Rembrandt in his day.==Biographic information==
Johnson was born in
Lovell, Maine, the eighth and last child of Philip Carrigan Johnson and Mary Kimball Chandler (born in New Hampshire, 18th October 1796, married 1818). His eldest brother
Commodore Philip Carrigan Johnson Jr. (father of Vice Admiral
Alfred Wilkinson Johnson) was followed by his beloved sisters Harriet, Judith, Mary, Sarah, Nell and his brother Reuben. Eastman grew up in
Fryeburg and
Augusta, where the family lived at Pleasant Street and later at 61 Winthrop Street.
His career as an artist began when his father, the owner of several businesses, Secretary of State for Maine (1840) and then in government in Washington DC, apprenticed him in 1840 to a Boston lithographer. In 1849 he moved to
Düsseldorf,
Germany where many artists, including many Americans, studied Art,
and there was accepted into the studio
Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, a German who had lived in the United States for a while before returning to Germany.
He was also a member of the
Union League Club of New York, which holds many of his paintings.
Style
Johnson's style is largely realistic in both subject matter and in execution. His original photorealistic charcoal sketches were not strongly influenced by period artists, but are informed more by his lithography training. Later works show influence by the 17th century Dutch and Flemish masters, and also by
Jean François Millet. Echoes of Millet's
The Gleaners can be seen in Johnson's
The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket although the emotional tone of the work is far different.
His careful portrayal of individuals rather than stereotypes enhances the realism of his paintings. Ojibwe artist Carl Gawboy notes that the faces in the
1857 portraits of Ojibwe people by Johnson are recognizable in people in the Ojibwe community today.
Some of his paintings such as
Ojibwe Wigwam at Grand Portage display near
photorealism long before the photorealism movement but in keeping with the American tradition of realism that can be seen in the works of
Charles Willson Peale whose painting
The Stairway Group is said to have fooled George Washington.
His careful attention to light sources contributes to the realism. Portraits
Girl and Pets and
The Boy Lincoln make use of single light sources in a manner that echoes the 17th Century Dutch Masters.
Subject matter
Jonhson's subject matter included portraits of the wealthy and influential from the President of the United States, to literary figures to portraits of unnamed individuals, but he's best know for his genre work, his paintings of everyday people in everyday scenes. Johnson often repainted the same subject changing style or details.
New England
His depictions of New England life, such as
''The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket, The Old Stagecoach, Husking Bee, Island of Nantucket, The Sap Gatherers, and Sugaring Off at the Camp, Fryeburg, Maine established him solidly as a genre painter. Over the course of five years, he made many sketches and smaller paintings depicting the process of turning maple sap into maple sugar, but never completed the larger work he'd started.
In contrast, the much celebrated
Old Stagecoach was mostly staged in his studio and its composition carefully planned. The stage coach itself originated as an abandoned coach that he encountered and sketched while hiking in the Catskils. The children were painted from local children recruited from near his Nantucket Studio. Despite this artifice, the painting was celebrated as wholesome, natural and bucolic.
His paintings and sketches of the Ojibwe remained unsold during his lifetime and now are in the possession of the
Tweed Museum of Art on the campus of
University of Minnesota Duluth.
Slavery
Negro Life at the South is considered Johnson's masterpiece. Although this painting was popularly known as
Old Kentucky Home nearly from the beginning, it depicts a scene from
Washington, D.C.
The painting is a domestic scene behind a dilapidated house. On the right in the foreground is a couple courting, in the middle there's a banjo player playing while an adult woman dances with a child as others look on. One of the onlookers, far to the right is a young white woman in an elegant white dress. Above the scene, an adult woman looks out a window as she steadies a small child sitting on the partially collapsed roof. Skin tones vary in the scene from person to person. Aside from the white observer on the far right, the palest person in the scene is the young woman being courted. The darkest skin belongs to the woman dancing with the child in the middle foreground. Some have viewed this as simple realism, others see it as an invitation to the viewer to contemplate the mixed racial heritage of those portrayed.
Another painting of Johnson's is less open to interpretation.
A Ride for Liberty — The Fugitive Slaves painted in 1862, depicts a slave family riding to freedom. This painting is based on Johnson's observations during the Civil War battle of Manassas.
[
]
Further Information
Get more info on 'Eastman Johnson'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://eastman_johnson.totallyexplained.com">Eastman Johnson Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
