Eastman Johnson, Artistic Leanings

"The Old Stagecoach" by Eastman Johnson

 "Eastman Johnson (1824-1906) had the good fortune to be born in a setting for which he felt an early and deep affinity. The town of Lovell, Maine, lies inland in the shadow of the White Mountain foothills. It was here that Johnson took his first tentative steps as a portrait artist and established the ties with native son Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that would lead to some of his most important portrait commissions.

The aspiring young artist first sought to sharpen his rudimentary skills about 1840, when he found employment in a Boston lithography shop. Boston's blossoming art circles must have been a revelation to the young Johnson. Leading Boston portraitist and gallery owner Chester Harding; Francis Alexander, who rendered a portrait of Charles Dickens during the writer's visit to the city early in 1842; and the great Washington Allston, elderly dean of Boston painters until his death in 1843, all participated in the formation of the Boston Artists' Association and the organization of its first annual exhibition.

Young and inexperienced, Johnson may have found the competition in Boston too stiff, for he returned to Augusta, Maine, in 1842 and set out to establish his reputation on more familiar ground."

To be continued...

(Excerpts from "Eastman Johnson: Painting America" by Teresa Carbone and Patricia Hills.)