Fenimore Receives $186K
To Catalog Artist’s Works
Museum Has 3 Eastman Johnson Paintings
COOPERSTOWN – The Fenimore Art Museum has received a $186,330 grant for a comprehensive catalog of the works of the 19th century artist Eastman Johnson from The Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts.
The funds will be used to complete the research on what’s termed a “catalogue raisonné” and transfer the information from an electronic database to a publicly accessible website.
The project is expected to be complete by Jan. 1, 2021.
“I have long admired Eastman Johnson’s work, as we have three exceptional examples in the collection,” said Fenimore President Paul S. D’Ambrosio.
“We are very pleased to facilitate his catalogue raisonné and are thrilled to be working with Dr. Hills and The Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts to make it a reality,” he said.
Eastman Johnson (1824-1906) was a leading genre and portrait painter of the middle-to-late 19th century. He was born in Maine and began his career as a portrait draughtsman, working in Maine, Washington D.C., and Boston.
In 1849 he went to Europe to learn to paint and study the Old Masters. He stayed two years in Düsseldorf, studying with Emanuel Leutze, then moved to The Hague where he established himself as a portrait painter. In 1855 he decided to relocate to Paris to study with Thomas Couture, who worked in a modern style for those times.
His stay was cut short when he received news his mother had died. He thus returned to the U.S. in late 1855, living first in Washington, where his family then resided, and then moving to New York City to advance his art career.
He became known as a genre painter of American scenes, and his paintings of African Americans were highly praised. He was one of the first of his generation to draw and paint the Ojibwe in the Lake Superior area.
He became an Associate of the National Academy of Design in 1859, the year he exhibited his masterwork “Negro Life at the South”; the following year he was elected a full Academician. During the war years he followed the Union troops and painted scenes he had witnessed. He also took time off to paint the maple sugar spring harvest in Maine in the early 1860s.
After 1871 he spent summers in Nantucket, where he painted his series of the cranberry fall harvest. The last twenty years of his life he spent primarily as a portraitist. He was active in New York art organizations, belonged to The Century Club and The Union League Club, and was a founding trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
He was a great influence on a number of genre painters, including the young Winslow Homer.
Art historian Patricia Hills, Professor Emerita at Boston University where she taught for 36 years, began the project in 1971 with her research on Eastman Johnson for her doctoral dissertation (PhD, Institute of Fine Arts, NYU). Over the years she has added to her Johnson files and has consulted with museums, galleries, auction houses, and private collectors on works by Johnson.
Research Associate Abigael MacGibeny (MA, Boston University) will assist Dr. Hills.