Who was Henrietta Johnston?

Martha R. Severens

Rutledge relied on the work of several earlier researchers. In 1899 the Reverend Robert Wilson (1838-1924) compiled a list of fifteen extant South Carolina portraits by Johnson,(3) and a quarter of a century later Eola Willis, a painter, posited that Johnston was the first professional female painter in America and the first American pastellist - claims that remain unchallenged.(4) Shortly thereafter Homer Eaton Keyes, the founder of ANTIQUES, proposed and then rejected the theory that Johnston was an associate of the Venetian artist Rosalba Carriera (1675-1757), arguing that Johnston was already established in Charleston by the time Carriera popularized pastel drawing. On the basis of two pastels discovered in England, Keyes speculated that Johnston was an Englishwoman from the neighborhood of Surrey, possibly of French extraction. However, he was at a loss to explain how or why she traveled to South Carolina.(5)

The questions about Johnston began again in 1980 when Christie, Manson and Woods auctioned the contents of Belvedere, a mid-eighteenth-century Irish country house, including nine pastels of members of the Southwell and Percival (or Perceval) families.(6) Stylistically, there was little doubt that these were by the artist. Six of them bore helpful inscriptions, such as the one on the back of Sir John Percival's portrait (Pl. III), which reads "Henrietta Dering Fecit/Dublin Anno 1705." A likeness of one of the Southwells is signed "Henrietta Johnston Fecit," her new surname reflecting her marriage in Dublin to Gideon Johnston on April 11, 1705.

More information came to light through the discovery of the 1746 will of Mary Dering (c. 1700-1747), a daughter of Henrietta and her first husband, Robert Dering (b. 1669), whom she had married in 1694. Having served as a dresser to the daughters of George II, Mary Dering had accumulated a sizable estate. To Countess Egmont, an aunt on her father's side, she left two "venns[?] done in Creons," which may be the pastel portraits of Philip Percival (1686-1748) and Sir John Percival (Pl. III).(7) To honor her mother, Mary Dering gave her "flat silver candlesticks and snuffers" to "Mrs. [W]Ragg in Charles Town, wife to Joseph Ragg, merchant," whose likeness Johnston had taken in 1719. To her aunt, "a sister of my mother living in the city of Gloucester whose maiden name was Ann de Beaulieu one hundred pounds."(8) Thus, almost accidentally, Johnston's maiden name became known, confirming Keyes's speculation that she was of French origin.

Professor Anne Crookshank of Trinity College in Dublin, while at work researching Irish artists, discovered the immigration records of 1687 that document the admission to England of Francis and Susanna de Beaulieu and their children Henry and Henrietta.(9) On the occasion of her marriage to Robert Dering, Johnston is described as the daughter of Susanna de Beaulieu, widow.(10) Assuming that she was about twenty years old at the time of the wedding, she was born sometime around 1674.

Pursuing the de Beaulieu genealogy has led to the suggestion that Johnston's family came from Quintin, near Rennes in northwestern France. Susanna, Henry, and Henrietta were prevalent names there in the late seventeenth century, and various members of the de Beaulieu family were Protestants who fled to England. Unfortunately, family and church records that might provide the date and place of Johnston's birth are incomplete for this period.(11)

Henrietta de Beaulieu Dering Johnston emerges as a remarkable artist who plied her craft to support her families on both sides of the Atlantic. When Robert Dering died sometime between 1698 and 1702, she may have had no other means of support.(12) In any case, she made pastel portraits of her first husband's relatives, who were members of the English gentry with appointments and property in Ireland. When Henrietta and Gideon Johnston came to South Carolina, dire necessity required that she supplement the family's income. Charleston was a pestilential colonial outpost where the Johnstons encountered devastating heat, the threat of invasion from the Yemassee Indians, and political difficulties among the parishioners of Saint Philip's Church. Because the Society of the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, a missionary division of the Church of England, was delinquent in remitting her husband's stipend, the Johnstons incurred significant debts. Gideon acknowledged Henrietta's contributions to their survival when he wrote to the society in 1709, "Were it not for the assistance my wife gives me by drawing pictures...I shou'd not have been able to live."(13) She may have executed portraits in exchange for goods and services as well as for money.(14) Three of her sitters were the DuBose sisters (see Pl. II), the stepdaughters of Dr. John Thomas (d. 1710), who attended the Johnstons in their many illnesses. If the pastels were not actual payment they may have been expressions of appreciation for the doctor's ministrations. As the Reverend Johnston wrote:

Dr. John Thomas, a frenchman, the only P'son that deserves the Name of a Physician in this place has been extremely kind and generous to me;...he has constantly attended us on all occasions When I call'd for a Bill...he told me he wou'd not take one single farthing from me.(15)

In Ireland, where paper and crayons were more accessible than in Charleston, Johnston rendered her sitters on a slightly larger scale, allowing for elongated proportions that emphasized the elegance of her sitters (see Pl. I). In pose and clothing the Irish likenesses are more sophisticated and pretentious, perhaps reflecting the elevated social standing of her sitters. These pastels are richer in color and have more fully developed backgrounds than those executed in Charleston. They are also less faded owing to the dimmer Irish light. Finally, compared to the American portraits, the Irish ones appear to be more firmly rooted in the tradition of Sir Godfrey Kneller, the most popular and prolific painter of the time. Several members of the Dering family sat for Kneller (see Pl. VI) and Johnston may have known and studied those portraits.(16)

The American portraits are more delicately rendered, have a minimum of background, and are pale - a result both of fading and the artist's economical use of her pastels. Poses are less complicated, with most portraits fully frontal.

In the forty known portraits by Johnston, her women sitters, both Irish and American, typically wear a gauzy white chemise under a simple outer garment, while men are shown in street clothes and wigs. The waistcoats of the Irishmen are often embellished with gold braid and buttons, and the likeness of a member of the Titcombe family stands out for its handsomely rendered drapery (Pl. VIII). Three men are dressed in armor (see Pls. I, VII), which Johnston apparently invented rather than copied from life.(17)

Where and from whom Johnston learned her craft are still a mystery. Rutledge suggested that she was taught by Simon Digby (w. 1668-1720), an Irish churchman and amateur artist who specialized in watercolor miniatures on ivory. However, Johnston would probably not have had reason to know him until she married her second husband, by which time she was already an accomplished portraitist. Rutledge also proposed Edmund Ashfield (w.c. 1680-c. 1700) and his follower Edward Lutterel (or Luttrell; w. 1680-c. 1724), who worked in England. However, their work resembles that of Sir Peter Lely (1618-1680) more than Kneller's and has few stylistic similarities to Johnston's pastels. Ashfield and Lutterel often worked in crayon and their sharp modeling is distinctly different from Johnston's soft shading.(18)

The artist may have found formal art training difficult to obtain in Dublin, where the Guild of Painters and Stainers strictly controlled apprentices and required all visiting artists to register.(19) They are unlikely to have encouraged the artistic education of a French-born woman. Instead, she may have availed herself of the Derings' portrait collection and taught herself by copying, perhaps under the guidance of a member of the family or of a painter in its employ.

Compounding the difficulty of identifying Johnston's teacher is her preferred medium, since pastels were not widely used.(20) Most artists used them only for either preliminary studies or as an intermediate step in the production of mezzotints. Before the end of the seventeenth century a few portraitists, including Lely, Ashfield, and Lutterel, used pastels to make replicas as well as finished portraits, but the true heyday of pastels was the eighteenth century, when artists such as Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1704-1788), Francois Boucher (1703-1770), Carriera, and John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) mastered the delicate medium.

Pastels suited Johnston's artistic sensibilities, allowing her to work on an intimate scale with a delicate touch. She could easily transport her materials to the houses of her patrons, who were also her social equals - members of her husband's extended family in Ireland and later, individuals active in Saint Philip's Church and fellow Huguenots in Charleston.

The artist's habit of inscribing the backboards of her pastels with her name, the date, and the location has allowed scholars to follow her from Ireland to Charleston and even to New York City.(21) Although the place and date of her birth are still unknown, a clearer picture has emerged of America's first professional female artist and first pastellist.

1 ANTIQUES, March 1947, pp. 183-185.

2 The first exhibition dedicated to Johnston's work opened at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in October 1991. It was accompanied by a catalogue entitled Henrietta Johnston: Who greatly helped...by drawing pictures, ed. Forsyth Alexander. The standard monograph is Margaret Simons Middleton, Henrietta Johnston of Charles Town, South Carolina: America's First Pastellist (Columbia, South Carolina, 1966).

3 Year Book, 1899, City of Charleston (Charleston, South Carolina, n.d.), pp. 138-139.

4 "The First Woman Painter in America," International Studio, July 1927, pp. 13-20; and "Henrietta Johnston, South Carolina Pastellist," Antiquarian, September 1928, pp. 46-47.

5 ANTIQUES, December 1929, pp. 490-494.

6 Christie, Manson and Woods catalogue for the sale at Belvedere, Mullingar, County Westmeath, Ireland, July 9, 1980.

7 This suggestion is made in Henrietta Johnston: Who greatly helped, p. 7, n. 10.

8 The will is dated April 23, 1746, and was proved on June 13, 1747 (Public Record Office, London, Prob. II, 755). I am grateful to Philip Blake and to Ellen Miles at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., for assisting me with this information.

9 Letter from Crookshank, June 1986. The letters of denization dated December 16, 1687, are in the state papers of charles II, Entry Book 67, p. 14 (Greater London Record Office).

10 Cited in the Christie, Manson, and Woods catalogue for the sale at Belvedere, p. 52.

11 Letter from Francois de Beaulieu, June 16, 1994.

12 The date of Robert Dering's death and his will were lost when Irish records were destroyed in a fire in Dublin in 1922. In a letter to me dated September 25, 1991, Philip Blake wrote that he believe Dering's estate provided for his children, but not his widow.

13 Quoted in The Carolina Chronicle: The Papers of Commissary Gideon Johnston, 1707-1716, ed. Frank J. Klingberg (Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 1946), p. 31.

14 An entry for September 19, 1719, in the estate account book of Elizabeth Sindrey (d. 1705) of Charleston reads, "To Cost of Mr. Clapp picture being two pistoles paid Mrs. Johnson....[pounds]10.0.0" (cited in Henrietta Johnston: Who greatly helped, p. 16).

15 Letter dated July 5, 1710, quoted in Middleton, Henrietta Johnston of Charles Town, pp. 18-19.

16 Many Dering family portraits are in Parham Park, Pulborough, West Sussex, England.

17 Letter from Walter J. Karcheski Jr., curator of arms and armor, Higgins Armory Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts, April 2, 1993.

18 Anne Crookshank disputes Rutledge's three candidates for Johnston's teachers. Other names that have been offered are: Thomas Forster (c. 1677-1713), suggested by Desmond Fitzgerald, the Knight of Glin; Thomas Pooley (1646-1723), who was frequently patronized by the Percival and Southwell families; Garret Morphey (w. 1678-1715 or 1716), a native-born Irish painter whose portraits resemble Kneller's; and William Gandy (1660-1729). See Jane Fenlon, "French Influence in Late Seventeenth Century Portraits," Irish Arts Review, 1989, pp. 158-168.

19 See Jane Fenlon, "The Painter Stainers Companies of Dublin and London, Craftsmen and Artists, 1670-1740," New Perspectives: Studies in Art History in Honor of Anne Crookshank (Dublin, Ireland, 1987), p. 102.

20 For more about the history of pastels see Patrick J. Noon, English Portrait Drawings and Miniatures (New Haven, Connecticut, 1979), pp. ix-xi.

21 In 1725 Johnston went to New York City on the invitation of a Colonel John Moore (1686-1749), a native of Charleston, to do pastels of four members of his family. See Henrietta Johnston: Who greatly helped, p. 16.

MARTHA R. SEVERENS is the curator of the Greenville County Museum of Art in Greenville, South Carolina.

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