Style
Nothing at all is known of Johnston's training; in pose and coloring, many of her portraits strongly resemble those of Sir Godfrey Kneller, which at the time were greatly in fashion in the United Kingdom and the colonies. Her pastels from Ireland are drawn in deep earth tones, while those from her time in South Carolina are generally lighter and smaller, due likely to the precious nature of her materials, which had to be imported. Her American female subjects are usually shown wearing chemises, while the male subjects are drawn mostly in street clothes; some of the latter are depicted wearing armor. Each subject is shown sitting erect, with the head frequently turned at a slight angle from the body and towards the viewer. The faces are typically dominated by large oval eyes. Johnston usually signed her portraits on their wooden backing, noting her name, the location of completion, and the date of completion in order. A typical signature is the inscription on the reverse of her portrait of Philip Percival: Henrietta Dering Fecit / Dublin Anno 1704.
About forty portraits by Johnston are known to survive; these tend to depict members of her social circle and, later, of her husband's Charleston congregation, such as Colonel William Rhett. Many of her South Carolina portraits depict members of Huguenot families that had settled in the New World, including the Prioleaus, Bacots, and duBoses. Today, a number of her works are held by the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston; others may be seen in the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Greenville County Museum of Art.
Read more about this topic: Henrietta Johnston
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise.”
—Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)
“As the style of Faulkner grew out of his rage—out of the impotence of his rage—the style of Hemingway grew out of the depth and nuance of his disenchantment.”
—Wright Morris (b. 1910)