John Johnston, an artist for the needleworker

Davida Tenenbaum Deutsch

John Johnston of Boston, whom the Massachusetts Centinel o November 4, 1789, called one of "the two best portrait painters in th[at] metropolis," painted on board and canvas a virtual who's who of the Boston region from about 1780 until at least 1812.(1) His sitters included Increase Sumner (1746-1799), Samuel Dexter (1725 or 1726-1810), John Lowell (1743-1802), John Gore (1718-1796), and Samuel Adams (1722-1803), as well as the city's most eminent visitor, George Washington, who was in Boston in October 1789. The Massachusetts Centinel reported that both Johnston and Christian Gullagher (1789-1826), the other "best portrait painter," would take the president's likeness, "the portrait which Mr. Johnston is to draw is designed for Fanueil Hall...[as] requested by the Selectmen of this town."(2)

Johnston's portrait painting extended to painting miniature likenesses on both ivory(3) and silk, the latter incorporated into patterns for schoolgirl embroideries. In this he was not alone, for during the 1790s portrait painters in miniature, many of them English and French, emigrated in great waves to America, bringing with them a predilection for combining paint and silk. The competition for business was so great that many of these artists were forced to seek alternative sources of income; in addition to portraits and fancy and mourning pictures on ivory, they began painting patterns on silk for needlework. They were able to take advantage of the proliferation at the time of schools for girls, where the curriculums generally included working elaborate silk embroideries. By promoting sales of their needlework patterns, they not only promoted their own businesses but also brought high style to American needlework. One J. Williams, boasting of his membership in the Royal Academy of Arts in London, advertised in the Massachusetts Mercury on January 17, 1800, that he could provide "Designs and Patterns of all kinds, painted or outlined on Silk or Sattin, to fill up with needlework, as is now practised by Ladies of the first distinction in Europe."

Clearly, such advertising stimulated even further the existing market for needlework. While this market continued to be exploited throughout the country well into the 1820s(4) the large number of schools for young women in or near Boston in the first decades of the nineteenth century(5) provided a particularly strong market for artists proffering patterns for aspiring needleworkers. Many advertised that they could fill the demand, among them the miniaturists Nathaniel Hancock (w. 1792-1809), Henry Williams (1787-1830), and William M. S. Doyle (1769-1828),(6) but the most prodigious provider of these patterns was Johnston, judging by my extensive comparative analysis between actual portraits signed by or attributed to him and a vast number of embroideries with Boston associations. In this article, I will identify the salient characteristics of Johnston's work as well as some of the sources for his designs.(7)

It should perhaps be no surprise that Johnston was active in the needlework-pattern market. He was apprenticed to the heraldic painter John Gore, who had painted needlework patterns from about 1750. His own father, Thomas Johnston (1708-1767), also a heraldic painter, almost certainly provided needlework patterns in order to keep up with his competitors - Gore and David Mason. The latter advertised in the Boston Gazette on December 18, 1758, that he did "coats of arms, Drawings on Sattin or Canvas for Embroidering."

The skills of the portrait miniaturist were particularly important to American schoolgirl embroideries because many of the compositions were memorials or conversation pieces that incorporated precise likenesses. Unlike in England, where memorials in needlework usually honored national figures, in America they were usually to individuals, and the mourners depicted were frequently representations of actual family members. However, the inclusion of actual portraits in needlework compositions was not an exclusively American practice. While for the most part the figures in English needlework of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were either biblical or allegorical, a number took on the visages of real people, particularly, in the seventeenth century, Charles I and Henrietta Maria and Charles II and Catherine of Braganza,(8) and a few included likenesses of less-exalted individuals.(9)

The paintings and silk embroideries illustrated in this article represent but a small number of the compositions analyzed in determining Johnston's style,(10) but they are more than adequate for identifying all the most important features of his work. On canvas there are portraits of John Peck [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE II OMITTED], Judge David Sewall [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE IV OMITTED], an unknown elderly gentleman [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE VII OMITTED], Byfield Lyde [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE IX OMITTED], Mrs. Jacob Gill [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE X OMITTED], Mrs. Samuel Hill [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE XII OMITTED], a Miss Wright [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE XV OMITTED], and General Jacob Gill [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE XVII OMITTED], all painted between about 1788 and 1806. The silk embroideries, all of which were worked between about 1800 and 1812, include memorials to Washington [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATES I, XIX, AND XXVII OMITTED]; a memorial to Hannah Kuhn [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE XVIII OMITTED] that incorporates what are undoubtedly actual likenesses of her husband, Jacob [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE III OMITTED], and her children Anne [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE VI OMITTED] and George [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE XIII OMITTED]; and a needlework picture entitled Miranda, depicting a scene from Shakespeare's Tempest [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATES XVI AND XXVI OMITTED].(11)

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)

It is very possible that Johnston, like some schoolgirls who made their own patterns, sometimes traced a print to produce the pattern for an embroidery, rather than drawing it freehand. For instance, in one of the embroideries based on Savage's Washington Family Martha Washington's right hand is rendered exactly as awkwardly as it is in the print. Every nuance of the Miranda engraving is duplicated in the embroidery after it, which would suggest that the pattern was traced, except for the fact that the print and the needlework are of different sizes. However, since a great many Boydell prints were issued in two sizes, it is possible that a larger version of the Miranda engraving was also produced.

Johnston probably worked with a great many needlework instructors in Boston, but the embroideries illustrated here may have been worked under the guidance of a single teacher, judging by similarities in the needlework itself.(22) They are related to an embroidery worked about 1804 by a Mary Lyman, which according to Abby Wright (1774-1842), a teacher in South Hadley, Massachusetts, was "executed at a celebrated school in Boston.... The expense of drawing and painting the faces was eight dollars and six months spent in Boston in working it."(23) The identity of this celebrated Boston teacher is still open to question; among the contenders are Elizabeth Douglass, Susanna Draper, Hannah Gray, and Hannah Moody, all of whom taught throughout the period covered by the embroideries.(24)

It is no wonder that Johnston's patterns for the needleworker were so popular. Not only does he appear to have had an extensive portfolio of prints from which to draw for inspiration, but his skill as a miniaturist allowed him to create magic with his brush. The faces that are undoubtedly actual portraits are beautifully and delicately rendered, and the stock figures have a classic Federal elegance. What more could a needleworker have wanted in her pattern?

1 See Frederick W. Coburn, "The Johnstons of Boston, Part Two," Art in America, vol. 21, no. 4 (October 1933), pp. 132-138; and Inventory of American Paintings, National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C., pp. 14,320-14,327. Johnston's last entry in Boston directories was in 1809, but the likeness of his niece, Mrs. Edward Hallam, dates from 1812 (Catalogue of American Portraits in the New-York Historical Society [Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 1974], vol. 1, pp. 318-319).

2 Washington himself noted in his diary on October 27, 1789: "when the committee from the Town presented their Address, it was accompanied with a request (in behalf they said, of the ladies) that I would set to have my Picture taken for the Hall, that others might be copied from it" (quoted in John Hill Morgan and Mantle Fielding, The Life Portraits of Washington and Their Replicas [Philadelphia, 1931], p. 152). Morgan and Fielding identified Gullagher's portrait in reference to this quotation, apparently unaware of the Massachusetts Centinel reference to Johnston's likeness of washington (the whereabouts of which is unknown).

3 Coburn, "The Johnstons of Boston," p. 136.

4 I have identified the patterns of Samuel and Godfrey Folwell of PhiLadelphia (ANTIQUES, February 1981, pp. 420-423; September 1985, pp. 526-527; October 1986, pp. 646-647; and March 1989, p. 616); and those of John Brewster Jr. of Connecticut ("John Brewster, Jr., An Artist for the Needleworker," Clarion, vol. 15, no. 4 [Fall 1990], pp. 46-50).

5 The Boston directory for 1803 listed more than thirty schoolmistresses: the 1810 directory included more than fifty.

6 Hancock offered "flower pieces, Landscape, &c. As pat[t]erns" in the Boston Columbian Centinel of June 17, 1797. Williams advertised "Painting upon...Silk, and Sattin, and Faces on Embroidery" in the Portland, Maine, Eastern Argus between November 25, 1803, and January 20, 1804. Doyle offered "Needle Work painted" in the Boston Patriot on December 29, 1810.

7 I first presented the thesis contained in this article in a lecture at the Colonial Williamsburg Forum in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1990, using most of the paintings and embroideries referred to and illustrated here.

8 For examples, see Lanto Synge, Antique Needlework (Blanford Press, Dorset, England, 1982), p. 77; Liz Arthur, Embroidery 1600-1700 at the Burrell Collection (Glasgow Museums and John Murray, London, 1995), pp. 69, 71, 88, 91, 99; Ann Sumner, "Men, Birds, Beasts & Flowers," An Exhibition of Seventeenth Century Pictorial Needlework (Holburne Museum and Crafts Study Centre, Bath, England, 1987), pp. 10, 20-26, 30, 33-34; and Margaret Swain, Embroidered Stuart Pictures (Shire Album, Haveffordwest, England, 1990), pp. 23-24.

9 Sumner, "Men, Birds, Beasts & Flowers,", pp. 21-23. A mid-seventeenth-century embroidery on satin in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London includes what are almost certainly actual portraits. In the eighteenth century tremendous press was given to the large-scale portraits in wool executed by Mary Knowles (1733-1805) and Mary Linwood (1755-1845), but these, too, were actually rarities.

10 The number of embroideries whose patterns and details I attribute to Johnston is too enormous to list, but representative examples (in addition to those illustrated in this article) are the Burroughs (c. 1805), Wolcott (1808), and Clapp (1809) family memorials (illustrated, respectively, in Betty Ring, American Needlework Treasures: Samplers and Silk Embroideries from the Collection of Betty Ring [E. P. Dotton, New York, 1987], Figs. 101, 103, 113); the Lyman family memorial (c. 1804) (ANTIQUES, September 1988, p. 412); and memorials to members of the Mallus and Johnson families (Important Americana, sale no. 5809, Sotheby's [New York], January 27, 1989, Lots 1114, 1115).

11 Also attributable to Johnston is another needleworked version of this scene (illustrated in ANTIQUES, August 1976, p. 300, Fig. 18).

12 Illustrated in Ring, American Needlework Treasures, pp. 62-63, Figs. 100, 100a.

13 These features are also rendered similarly in the likenesses by Johnston of the following: John McClean (Harvard University' Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts; illustrated in Alan Burroughs, Limners and Likenesses [Harvard University, Press, Cambridge, 1936], Fig. 7); Samuel Bass (1757-1812) (Lisnan Allyn Art Museum, New London, Connecticut); John Jackson (b. 1753) (Boston Athenaeum, Boston, Massachusetts); and Samuel Dexter (American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts).

14 The numbers of prints artists had on hand are truly astounding. For example, James Cox (1751-1834), who worked primarily in Philadelphia, boasted in 1795 of "Copies with upwards of two thousand pieces" (Dunlap and Claypoole's American Daily Advertiser, September 26, 1795) and on February 26, 1798, he announced in the Porcupine's Gazette that he had some fourteen thousand prints to choose from. Maximillian Godefroy advertised in the Baltimore American and Commercial Daily Advertiser, of November 12, that he had "a valuable collection of 3,600 chosen pieces from the best masters" (in the files of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Winston-Salem, North Carolina). Alexander and Archibald Robertson, who advertised in the New York Daily Advertiser on May 1, 1797, that they created patterns with "history devices, heads, figures, landscapes," had an ever-growing collection of prints, judging by their offerings in New York newspapers.

15 The print was engraved by Francesco Bartolozi and published by Anthony Poggi on August 1, 1782.

16 See p. 60 of this issue.

17 Based on Gilbert Stuart's so-called Athenaeum portrait of Washington, Nutter's was published in London in January and February 1798 (see Wendy C. Wick, George Washington, An American Icon: The Eighteenth Century Graphic Portraits [National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1982], p. 60).

18 Savage's likeness, taken from life in 1789 or 1790, was published in London in 1793 (ibid., p. 106).

19 Published by Savage and Robert Wilkinson in London on March 10, 1798, it was the design source for among others, an embroidery by an unidentified needleworker (Americana From the Collection of Mr. Austin and Jill R. Fine, sale no. 5552, Sotheby's [New York], January 30, 1987, Lot 1033); and one worked by Jane Thompson Reynolds (illustrated in ANTIQUES, February 1981, p. 404).

20 Balch-school examples are illustrated in Betty Ring, Let Virtue Be a Guide to The: Needlework in the Education of Rhode Island Women, 1730-1830 (Rhode Island Historical Society, Providence, 1983), pp. 202-203. An example from an unidentified location is illustrated in Edith Gregor Halpert Folk Art Collection (Sotheby Parke Bernet, November 14 and 15, 1973, Lot 253).

21 The embroidery, worked by Caroline Blaney, is illustrated in ANTIQUES, August 1976, p. 299, Fig. 14. The Boydells published the print with two different titles, The Enchanted Island: Before the Cell of Prospero (identified by Jane Nylander in ibid.) and Prospero, Miranda and Caliban (The Painted Word: British History Painting, 1750-1830, ed. Peter Cannon-Brookes [Heim, London, 1991], p. 88, Fig. 76).

22 Following are some of the characteristics linking the needlework. In some instances, every surface is stitched, with the exception of the sky, the heads, arms, and feet; and in some even the sky is stitched in pan or in whole, usually in rather long stitches. Various shades of silk were used to create a striated effect in the ground, the trees, and the background. The stitchery of the background and of the monuments usually goes from left to right, while that on the obelisks often goes up and down. The monuments are usually outlined in a darker silk and the lettering is stitched. The ground foliage and some of the tree foliage is worked in a checkerboard effect, and the willow branches are broad clumps of striated hues worked with a tubular quality. The trunks of trees are done with stitches worked at angles, sometimes in irregular segments. These techniques created a controlled vibrancy and there is often a real feeling of wind passing through the scene.

23 Quoted in Sophie Eastman, In Old South Hadley (Blakely Printing Company, Chicago, 1912), p. 74. See n. 10 of this article for the Lyman family memorial. Abby Wright's reference to cost is important because artists did not usually quote their charges for painting patterns in their advertisements, although they often did do so for other work. For example, although J. Williams gave his fee for "Portraits, in heads or whole Length, from 5 tn 30 Dollars" in the Masssachusetts Mercury of January 17, 1800, he did not give a price for "Designs and Patterns." In another advertisement for patterns, however, he did note "[t]he prices for the drawing [would] be dependent on their magnitude, or the difficulty and talent required in the execution" (Federal Gazette and Baltimore Daily Advertiser, September 3, 1799). Thus, patterns with actual or more detailed likenesses would have been more costly than those with stock figures or more loosely-drawn faces. As an example, based on the complexity of the design and the fineness of the portraits in the Kuhn memorial, it would have been more expensive than the Lyman one.

24 One celebrated teacher who is most likely not a contender is Susanna Haswell Rowson (1762-1824). Abby Wright specified that the Lyman memorial was executed in Boston, and at the time "in Boston" meant specifically Boston proper. not Newton, Milton, Dorchester, or other outlying towns. Mrs. Rowson ran a very wellknown and highly respected school in the Boston region, but it was not situated in Boston proper between 1800 and 1807. Moreover, while the embroideries executed under Mrs. Rowson's tutelage exhibit some of the characteristics of those under discussion here, they lack the finesse seen in these pieces. For example, in the embroideries worked under Rowson the striated ground is much rougher, the willow leaves are individually delineated and there is no sense of movement through them, the figures lack a sense of the body beneath, and the turkey-like eagles are very unlike the more majestic ones in this group.

DAVIDA TENENBAUM DEUTSCH writes and lectures about women's accomplishments, particularly needlework, and the patterns and mourning devices painted by miniaturists.

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