David Johnson, a landscape painter associated with the second generation Hudson River School, was born in New York City in 1827. Although he was initially thought to have been self-taught, recent scholarship has revealed that he attended classes at the National Academy of Design during 1845-1846. By 1849 he was exhibiting views of the Catskills and the Genesee region of New York state at both the National Academy and the American Art Union. Many of these early works were produced during sketching trips made in the company of such fellow artists as John F. Kensett and John W. Casilear. During a brief period in 1850, probably to refine his skills, Johnson studied briefly with the eminent landscapist, Jasper F. Cropsey. He also familiarized himself with the work of European Old Masters through prints and reproductions; however, throughout his long and prolific career, he always maintained that nature was his greatest teacher.
Johnson was elected an Associate member of the National Academy in 1859 and a full Academician two years later. Like most landscape specialists of his era, he spent his summers painting in the White Mountains, at Lake George and in the Catskills. He also produced numerous pastoral and river landscapes depicting various locales throughout New York State, especially the Fort Putnam and West Point regions. Although according to tradition, Johnson is believed to have made trips to the American West and to Europe, there is no documentary evidence to support this. During the latter part of his career, Johnson frequently painted in western Connecticut.
Johnson reached the height of his popularity during the mid-1870s. In 1876, he was awarded a first-class medal at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. A year later he exhibited his HousatonicRiver (location unknown) at the Paris Salon. He also received an award form the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association of Boston.
Until the late 1870s, Johnson's style was characterized by an emphasis on intense realism, meticulous detail, a precise painting technique and rich coloration ‑‑ stylistic traits that ally him with both the luminist and American Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics. Many of his paintings from the 1880s and 1890s, in their soft, tonal qualities, reveal the influence of the French Barbizon tradition.
Towards the end of his life, as critics and patrons alike began to focus their attention on the adherents of Impressionism and academic realism, Johnson's career slipped into relative obscurity. In 1904 he moved form Manhattan to Walden, New York, where he died four years later. However, since about 1980, marked by the pioneering scholarship of the late John I.H. Baur, Johnson's oeuvre has attracted new attention and appreciation. Recent exhibitions have been organized by the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University.1 Representative examples of Johnson's work can be found in prominent public and private collections throughout America, including the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
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1 See John I.H. Baur, " . . . the exact brushwork of Mr. David Johnson: An American Landscape Painter, 1827-1908," American Art Journal 12 (Autumn 1980): 32-77; John I.H. Baur and Margaret C. Conrads, Meditations on Nature: The Drawings of David Johnson [exh. cat.] (Yonkers, N.Y.: Hudson River Museum, 1987); and Gwendolyn Owens, Nature Transcribed: The Landscapes and Still Lifes of David Johnson [exh. cat.] (Ithaca, N.Y.: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, 1988).
