David Johnson
Image Not Available
for David Johnson
David Johnson
1827 - 1908
American painter. He was a member of the Hudson River school and was virtually self-taught except for a few lessons from Jasper Francis Cropsey. He was primarily a landscape artist and a Luminist who rendered subtle effects of light and atmosphere with precise realism. His earliest works were copies of prints, for example West Point from Fort Putnam after Robert Havell jr (c. 1848; Cooperstown, Mus. NY State Hist. Assoc.). His first painting from nature (executed in the company of John William Casilear and John Frederick Kensett) was Haines Fall, Kauterskill Clove (1849; untraced, see Baur, fig.), and he began exhibiting the same year.
Johnson travelled widely in the north-east states of the USA, finding subjects in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the Adirondacks, and elsewhere in New York State and in Virginia. He made one trip west to the Rocky Mountains in 1864–5, where he painted Landscape, Mountains and Lake (New York, David Findlay Gal.). His most striking works are those depicting rock formations, for example Forest Rocks (1851; Cleveland, OH, Mus. A.), Natural Bridge, Virginia (1860; Winston-Salem, NC, Reynolda House) and Brook at Warwick (1876; Utica, NY, Munson–Williams–Proctor Inst.). He also did many highly finished and detailed drawings of trees and rocks. Occasionally he experimented with a freer, more painterly technique, generally with less success. His few portraits are all copies of photographs or paintings by other artists. He also painted a few still-lifes, such as Phlox (1886; Winston-Salem, NC, Reynolda House). [John I. H. Baur and Nika Elder. "Johnson, David." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 9, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T045011.]
Person TypeIndividual
Terms
