Eastman Johnson, portrait and genre painter, was perhaps the most prominent and successful of the many American artists who came to the fore at the time of the Civil War.

Born Jonathan Eastman Johnson in Lowell, Maine, July 29, 1824; died in New York, April 5, 1906. He studied in Dusseldorf, Rome, Paris and The Hague, and settled in New York, becoming a member of the National Academy of Design in 1860.

He was the son of Philip C. Johnson, Secretary of State for Maine. He worked in a lithographic establishment in Boston in 1840 and after a year went to Augusta, ME, where he commenced making portraits in back crayon. He also visited Newport.

In 1845 the family moved to Washington D.C., and young Johnson drew many crayon portraits, working in the Senate Committee Rooms at the Capitol. In 1858 he moved to New York, where he remained the rest of his life, except for a period spent in Boston and in visits to Europe in 1885, 1891 and 1897.

He painted his best rural genre in Nantucket, during the 1870's.

MEMBER:
National Academy of Design, 1860
Society of American Artists, 1881
Century Association

EXHIBITED:
Paris Exposition, 1889 (medal), 1900 (medal)
Pan American Exposition, Buffalo, 1901 (gold medal)
Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, 1904, (gold medal)

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS (partial):
National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
New York Historical Society, New York City
Timken Art Gallery, San Diego