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DAVID JOHNSON

1827 - 1908

CountryNew York City, New York, USA

BiographyDavid Johnson was born in New York City on May 10, 1827. He did not avail himself of local opportunities for a formal education. He was self-trained, having painted in the company of such artists as John Kensett and Jasper Cropsey, refining his natural abilities through their examples. As did other members of the first and second generations of the Hudson River School painters, he spent his summers in the popular rural locales of the Northeast. Although Johnson is known to have painted with Cropsey in New Jersey in 1850, this painting does not appear to be the work of a beginning artist. He also painted in New Jersey in 1877 and again in 1880. "Schooley's Mountain" probably dates from one of those visits. By the early 1870s Johnson's method of painting had evolved into a tightly controlled technique. That hard-edged realism was tempered in the late 1870s by his use of poetic light and atmospheric haze, revealing an interest in the Barbizon School. This wedding of the poetry of that school with the precision of the Hudson River School would become his hallmark. Yet in reviews of the time he was noted for his exact brushwork, which always remained dominant. Using a fine brush and minute, almost invisible strokes, he created richly detailed and delicate vistas. Johnson's fondness for painting rocks began in the 1850s. "Schooley's Moutain" is an unusual, imbalanced composition, with the heavy cluster of trees on the left side in stark contrast with the comparative weightlessness of the right side with its open field and the lake. It may have been an attempt at a less contrived scene and possibly a further exploration of an earlier lake composition of 1870, in which Johnson attempted to break from his formulaic rut of a foreground river bank, middle ground of water, and mountain background.
The paintings of Johnson were never immensely popular, however, and a sale of his work in 1890 at the Fifth Avenue Art Galleries appears to indicate a certain financial duress. In 1894, following a period of dwindling output, he gave up the YMCA studio he had occupied for over two decades. Although he continued to paint, ten years later he retired to Walden, New York, where he died in 1908.

Information taken from the artist's binder in The Print Study Room.
Entered by: Michael Clayton, Print Study Room Staff, 2/7/06

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