Edwin Forrest by Johnson, David
This is Edwin Forrest, painted in 1871 by David Johnson. It hangs in no major museum, but the story it holds is one of the most dramatic in American theater, which is fitting, since Forrest was the most famous actor in America.
Look at the asymmetry in the eyes. Johnson captures something deeply unsettled: the near eye bores into you with the directness Forrest wielded on stage for four decades. The far eye recedes into shadow, watchful and distant. The drooping walrus mustache, the windswept hair this is not a polished celebrity portrait. It is a man exhausted.
In 1871, Forrest was embroiled in a nationally publicized divorce from actress Catherine Sinclair. The trial had dragged on for years, costing him much of the fortune he built as the country's first great Shakespearean star. He was broke in spirit and wallet, and this portrait reflects that collapse.
David Johnson was primarily a Hudson River School landscape painter. He was not a society portraitist. That Forrest sat for him, likely for a modest sum, completes the picture: a dying titan, stripped of his power, recorded not by a flatterer but by a painter who spent his career looking at quiet woods.
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By 1871, Edwin Forrest was the most famous actor in America. For 40 years, he filled theaters with Shakespeare and raw power. But this is not a triumphant portrait. Look at the eyes. One watches you. One has retreated. He was suing his wife for divorce. The scandal was national. He lost most of his fortune in the fight. He paid David Johnson, a landscapist, a modest fee for this. The most powerful actor of his century, sitting for a painter who preferred trees.