John Johnston, an artist for the needleworker

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 1997 by Davida Tenenbaum Deutsch

Mrs. Gill, Judge Sewall, Mrs. Hill, the elderly gentleman, Byfield Lyde, and the painted likenesses of Washington in the embroidered memorials to him, are excellent vehicles for studying Johnston's most typical painted features: the head turned to the viewer's right, the arching of the eyebrows in a triangular manner, the positioning and detailing of the eyes, including the circles under them and the tendency to place the eyes in deep sockets created mostly by shadowing; the manner in which the bridge of the nose flows into the eyebrows; the distinctive setting of the jaw; and the pinching of the lips. Sometimes the lips are pinched so tightly that the bottom jaw seems to be thrust forward, as in Mrs. Gill, the old man, Anne Kuhn, and one version of Washington.(12) Johnston's manner of rendering other facial characteristics, specifically double chins and a distinctive shadow beneath the eye, are evident in Judge Sewall, Byfield Lyde, and Mrs. Samuel Hill on canvas and in the painted depictions of Washington on silk. John Peck, Judge Sewall, Jacob and Anne Kuhn, and Washington all have similar high foreheads, and the four men have similarly rendered receding hairlines.

While Anne Kuhn displays a number of the characteristics discussed above, she and her father have eyebrows that are more rounded; their full, somewhat Cupid-like, lips are akin to those of John Peck and Miss Wright.(13) The over-all rendering of Byfield Lyde is to a great degree mirrored in George Kuhn, the portraits of Washington and the profiles of the secondary figures in the Washington memorials, and in Miranda. Particularly akin to Lyde's are the brows, setting of the eyes (sometimes with an intense use of shadow), and the delineation of the mouth.

More often than not, Johnston's work on both canvas and silk has a painterly quality that is particularly evident in the execution of the hair, both curly and straight, as well as in the painting of the figures' skin. By way of example, Mrs. Gills soft curls are rendered like those of Columbia and of the putti in the Washington memorials, and General Gill's and Miss Wright's bangs are like those of Jacob Kuhn. The complexions of the Gills, Columbia, and the auxilliary figures in the Washington memorials possess a rosy, robust quality.

Johnston's palette is particularly distinctive in the painting of the sky: his blues range from a bright blue to a deep rich one (at times suggestive of an impending storm), infused with pinks that range from a deep rosy hue to a delicate pink. At times he used the deep blue to indicate distant mountains, and when painting the setting sun he often indicated the rays with a soft orange.

For the design of the embroidered Washington memorials, as well as for Miranda, Johnston relied on prints, an important part of any artist's cabinet.(14) His patterns for the Washington memorials are based on an engraving of Angelica Kauffmann's Fame Decorating the Tomb of Shakespeare(15) and Enoch Gridley's Pater Patriae,(16) embellished with portraits by either William Nutter(17) or Edward Savage.(18) Johnston used Savage's engraving The Washington Family (1798) as the design source for a number of embroideries.(19) He based the design for Miranda on a previously-unidentified print of that title [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]. The same print was used as a design source for embroideries stitched by young women at schools in various other locales, including at Mary Balch's school in Providence, Rhode Island.(20) I have also identified Johnston's hand in the painting of an embroidered picture of another scene from The Tempest, which is based on an engraving published by John and Josiah Boydell in 1797.(21)