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John Christen Johansen

The Village Rider, 1911

oil on canvas

54 ¼ x 68 1/8 in.

Gift of the Friends of American Art

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John Christen Johansen was born in Copenhagen and came to America as an infant.  He studied in Cincinnati under Frank Duveneck and later at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he later taught.  He began his career as a landscape painter but alter his course to focus on portraiture.  Johansen left Chicago and moved to Paris where he studied at the Académie Julian and counted among his friends James Abbott McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent.  After World War I, Johansen received a commission from the United States government to paint the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.  Numerous portrait commissions of such important individuals as President Herbert Hoover helped strengthen his career. 

Johansen is best known for his figure paintings executed in a broad, fluid style.  During a summer stay at Martha’s Vineyard, off the Massachusetts coast, he spotted neighborhood children taking turns riding a white horse.  He persuaded one young equestrienne, Miss Margaret Ripley, to model for him astride the gentle horse.   The light palette, loose brushwork, and casual pose sustain the scene’s formality.  Johansen’s deft touch is especially evident in the girl’s hat, where he used the weave of the canvas to simulate the texture of woven straw.

Reference

David Bernard Dearinger. Painting and Sculpture in the Collection of the National Academy of Design, Manchester, VT: Hudson Hills Press, 2004. ISBN-13: 978-1555950293