About the Eastman Johnson letters
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Biographical Information | Description of the Collection | How to Use the Collection
Biographical Information
American painter and printmaker Jonathan Eastman Johnson was born in Lovell, Maine in 1824. After apprenticing with a Boston lithographer, he moved to Washington D.C. in 1845 and became a portraitist of prominent Americans, including Daniel Webster and Dolly Madison. Beginning in 1849, Johnson spent two years at the Royal Academy in Dusseldorf, Germany, studying with Emanuel Leutze, and three years at The Hague. After returning to America in 1855, he settled in New York and focused on painting American genre subjects including Native Americans, African Americans, and farmers. He married Elizabeth Buckley in 1869, and they bought a home in Nantucket where he spent every summer for the rest of his life. After 1880, as the popularity of genre paintings declined, Johnson focused again on portraiture. He died in 1906.
Description of the Collection
Overview - Scope and Contents [+]
The letters of Eastman Johnson contain 12 items and date from 1851 to 1899. The letters provide scattered documentation of his career as a painter and printmaker. READ MORE
Arrangement and Series Description
Due to the small size of this collection, items are categorized into one series consisting of two folders. Items are arranged chronologically.
Subjects
This collection is indexed in the online catalog of the Archives of American Art under the following index terms. People, families and organizations are listed under "Subjects" when they are the topic of collection contents and under "Names" when they are creators or contributors.
- Subjects:
- Benson, Eugene, 1837-1908
- Leutze, Emanuel, 1816-1868
- Wolf, Henry, 1852-1916
- Subjects-Topical:
- Painters -- New York (State) -- New York
- Portrait painters -- New York (State) -- New York
- Painting, Modern -- 19th century -- New York (State) -- New York
- Names:
- McEntee, Jervis, 1828-1891
- Ordway, Alfred T., 1819-1897
- Lanman, Charles, 1819-1895
Provenance
Items were donated in 1979 by Caroline Johnson Brown, Johnson's grand-niece, in 1976 by Letitia Howe, and by Charles E. Feinberg, an active donor to the Archives of American Art between 1955 and 1962, and were microfilmed after receipt.
How the Collection was Processed
The collection was received in several accessions and microfilmed at some point after receipt on reels D10, D30, D316, 2814, 5030, 1817, and 3483. The entire collection was fully processed, arranged, and described by Erin Corley and scanned in 2005, with funding provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art.
How to Use the Collection
Restrictions on Use
The Eastman Johnson letters are owned by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Literary rights as possessed by the donor have been dedicated to public use for research, study, and scholarship. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.
The collection has been digitized and is available online via AAA's website.
Available Formats
This collection has been digitized. View the Eastman Johnson letters online
The collection was digitized in 2005 and is available via the Archives of American Art website.
How to Cite this Collection
Eastman Johnson letters, 1851-1899. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.