Friday, December 5, 2014

EASTMAN JOHNSON at Auction

    • For many years the foremost genre painter in the United States, Eastman Johnson was among the first American artists of his generation to receive extensive training abroad. His oeuvre thus serves as an important link to two generations, combining traditional, domestic subjects with more advanced technique and expression.

      Johnson was born in Lovell, Maine, in 1824, but he grew up in nearby Fryeburg. In 1834 his family moved to Augusta, where his father was involved in state government. There he opened a crayon-portrait studio at age 18, after first working briefly in a Boston lithography shop.

      About two years later, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he took black-and-white likenesses of eminent national figures, such as Dolly Madison and John Quincy Adams, in the hope of building a gallery of famous personages. By 1846 he had returned to Boston, where he received a good deal of patronage from the family of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

      His artistic apprenticeship began in earnest in 1849, when he traveled to Düsseldorf, Germany, and received rigorous training in drawing at that city's academy. More congenial, however, was the time he spent in the studio of Emanuel Leutze, where he concentrated on painting.

      In 1851 he went to London to see the Universal Exposition and then relocated to The Hague, remaining for over three years. His lengthy stay at The Hague was somewhat unusual for an American artist, but he apparently found much inspiration in the Dutch Old Masters as well as ready patronage through August Belmont, the wealthy American ambassador. His European education ended with several months spent in the Parisian studio of Thomas Couture before the death of his mother brought him home in 1855.


      For the next few years Johnson cast about for work, traveling to Lake Superior to visit a sister and sketch members of the Chippewa Tribe, painting in Cincinnati, renting a studio in New York, and spending time with his family in Washington, D.C. The turning point came in 1859 with the exhibition in New York of his Negro Life in the South (New-York Historical Society). His ambiguous picture of the leisure activities of a group of slaves was a sensation at a time when the topic of slavery was being universally debated, and it resulted in his election as an Associate to the National Academy of Design.

      For two decades thereafter, Johnson explored themes of national life with his humble interior scenes and larger rural tableaux, each picture usually the result of careful study through numerous drawings and oil sketches.

      Johnson exhibited widely and was active in the National Academy, the Century and Union League Clubs, the Metropolitan Museum, and even the Society of American Artists, a group normally associated with a younger generation of painters. He was comfortable in upper-class society, owned a large home in Manhattan, and spent his summers on the island of Nantucket, the scene of many of his paintings. During the last twenty years of his life, his work changed distinctly.

      Although quite successful in the field of genre painting, he gave it up for unknown reasons and returned to portraiture, the artistic activity of his youth. Able to command extremely large fees, he spent the rest of his life painting the likenesses of prominent gentlemen of New York City, where he died in 1906. 


Sotheby's 2013



EASTMAN JOHNSON
1824 - 1906
INTERESTING NEWS


LOT SOLD. 335,000 

EASTMAN JOHNSON
CHILDREN READING




LOT SOLD. 5,000 
Sotheby's 2012



EASTMAN JOHNSON

LANDSCAPE SKETCH 

Lot vendu   4,688

Sotheby's 2011











EASTMAN JOHNSON
FEEDING THE TURKEY




 LOT SOLD. 13,750
Christie's 2013

EASTMAN JOHNSON (1824-1906) 

MOTHER AND CHILD

Price Realized $62,500 
(Christie's 1999 PR.$27,600)









EASTMAN JOHNSON (1824-1906)

AT THE CLOSING OF THE DAY

Price Realized $267,750 




EASTMAN JOHNSON (1824-1906)
STUDY FOR "ICE SKATER/CHILD WARMING HANDS IN STUDIO"




Estimate $40,000 - $60,000 Price Realized $32,500 

Christie's 2011







Christie's 2009



EASTMAN JOHNSON (1824-1906)

PORTRAIT OF MRS. CROSS

Estimate $4,000 - $6,000 Price Realized $3,250 




EASTMAN JOHNSON (AMERICAN, 1824-1906)

OLD WATERLOO SOLDIER

    Estimate $2,000 - $3,000 Price Realized $6,875 




    Christie's 2008



    EASTMAN JOHNSON (1824-1906)

    SKETCH FOR 'MILTON DICTATING PARADISE LOST TO HIS DAUGHTERS'

    Estimate $4,000 - $6,000 Price Realized $5,625 


    Christie's 2007



    EASTMAN JOHNSON (1824-1906)

    PLAY ME A TUNE

    Estimate $250,000 - $350,000 Price Realized $504,000 


    Christie's 2006




    EASTMAN JOHNSON (1824-1906)

    PORTRAIT OF JAMES G. WILSON

    Estimate $50,000 - $70,000 Price Realized  $33,600 







     
     
     
    Christie's 2005



    EASTMAN JOHNSON (1824-1906)

    THE LITTLE SOLDIER

    Estimate $400,000 - $600,000 Price Realized $856,000 


    EASTMAN JOHNSON (1824-1906)

    THE BOHEMIAN GIRL

    Estimate $8,000 - $12,000 Price Realized $12,000 




    Christie's 1999








    More christie's





    The Old Mount Vernon

    PRICE REALIZED

    $662,500









    Child Playing with Rabbit

    PRICE REALIZED


    $434,500



    The Eavesdropper
    PRICE REALIZED
    $104,500



    Lady in Yellow (Edwina Booth)
    PRICE REALIZED
    $47,500



    Harold McGuffey
    PRICE REALIZED
    $35,000

    Bonhams 2013



    Eastman Johnson (American, 1824-1906)
     Indian Family 
    19 1/8 x 22 3/4in
    Sold for US$ 422,500 








    EASTMAN JOHNSON
    (American, 1824-1906)
    Portrait of a Woman 
    46 x 28in
    Sold for US$ 25,000 



    Bonhams 2012






    Eastman Johnson (American, 1824-1906) 

    Portrait of a young man 
    24 3/4 x 22 1/2in
    Sold for US$ 10,000


    Christie's 2002





    PR.$11,950

     Christie's 1999






    Skinner 2014






    Eastman Johnson (American, 1824-1906) 

    Old Man Reading

    Sold for: 
    $4,920

    • Bonhams 4 Dec 2013 










      EASTMAN JOHNSON 
      Portrait of John Milton
      Estimate $8,000 - $12,000
      Price Realized (with Buyer's Premium) $7,200