Painter, born in Lovell, Maine, USA. He studied in Germany and France (184955) and returned to America to continue his career as a genre and portrait painter. His series of canvases focusing on harvesting cranberries, such as The Cranberry Pickers (c.1875), remains his most famous work.
Eastman (Jonathan) Johnson (July 29, 1824 - April 5, 1906) was an American painter. He was best known for his genre paintings, paintings of scenes from everyday life, his portraits both of everyday people, but he also painted portraits of prominent Americans such as Abraham Lincoln, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Biographic information
Johnson was born in Lovell, Maine, but grew up in Fryeburg and Augusta.
His career as an artist began in 1840 when his father, and innkeeper, apprenticed him to a Boston lithographer. Johnson then moved to The Hague and studied 17th century Dutch and Flemish masters. In 1859, he established a studio in New York city and secured his reputation as an American artist with an exhibition featuring his painting Negro Life at the South or as it is more popularly known Old Kentucky Home.
Style
Johnson's style is largely realistic in both subject matter and in execution. 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 Wilson Peale whose painting The Stairway Group is said to have fooled George Washington.
His careful attention to light sources contributes to the realism.
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 is best know for his genre work, his paintings of everyday people in everyday scenes.
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.
In contrast, the much celebrated Old Stagecoach was mostly staged in his studio and its composition carefully planned.
Ojibwe
After his return from Europe, Johnson went to visit his sister in what was then the western frontier of Wisconsin. Carl Gawboy, a modern day Ojibwe artist, has posited that Johnson's guide was likely George Bonga, a son of Pierre Bonga, a freed slave, who had married an Ojibwe woman. Gawboy speculates that Johnson's time with this mixed-race family changed his approach to painting. His drawings and painting depict Ojibwe people in a much more intimate and relaxed manner than is usual for painting of that period. He did not focus solely on individual portraits, but also did paintings and sketches of scenes which including the Ojibwe dwellings, St. Louis bay, and other groupings of Ojibwe in everyday activities.
Johnson left Wisconsin due to wide spread financial panic that rendered his real estate investments there worthless.
Slavery
Negro Life at the South, Johnson's masterpiece, was pointed to by proponents and detractors of slavery as defending their position. Though 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.
Another painting of Johnson's is less open to interpretation. This painting is based on Johnson's observations during the Civil War battle of Manassas.
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