Artist
Centurion, 1920–1964
Born 25 November 1876 in Copenhagen, Denmark
Died 23 May 1964 in New Canaan, Connecticut
Buried Oak Woods Cemetery
, Chicago, Illinois
Proposed by Paul Dougherty and Gifford R. Beal
Elected 3 April 1920 at age forty-three
Seconder of:
Century Memorial
John Johansen would have made a bad politician because he did not understand compromise. And yet he worked in that branch of painting in which the art of the politician often plays a part. Portraitists have been tempted to please a wealthy sitter against their artist’s conscience. If John was ever brushed by such a temptation, he turned from it instinctively. The rejection was not argued or arguable; it was a reflex. His honesty, like his talent, was part of him; it was as recognizable and as admirable.
John endeared himself to us in The Century—even to those who had not the privilege of knowing him—by his portraits of our favorites. He caught the imponderable thing that made them loved whether the portrait was of President Paul Kieffer or of [head hallman] William Daniel.
Those who sat for him remember the stark simplicity of his studio. It was strictly and solely a workshop. There were no concessions to comfort in the shape of soft chairs or sofas. The walls were bare but for one small Velasquez print. The place was tense with the artist’s single preoccupation with his art; to be the subject of his work there was an experience not easily forgotten.
John Christen Johansen was born in Copenhagen, but came to the United States in his infancy. His boyhood was spent in Chicago, and he studied under Frank Duveneck at the Chicago Art Institute. He married Jane MacLane, like himself a distinguished portraitist. Her death came four months to the day before his.
The subjects of his paintings included Field Marshal Foch, Earl Haig, Herbert Hoover, Jan Paderewski, Georges Clemenceau, and Woodrow Wilson. He has painted portraits of Centurions Jonas Lie, Paul Manship, Robert W. De Forest, Richard Kimball, Lawrence Grant White, Roy Brown, Irving S. Olds, LeRoy Kimball, Morris Hadley, Herbert Brownell, and Elihu Root, Senior. In 1953 he had a one-man show in The Century art gallery.
Animated and energetic even in his eighty-eighth year John’s slender figure was familiar in our clubhouse as it had been for forty-four years. We shall miss him there, but we shall live among many monuments to his memory.
Roger Burlingame
1965 Century Association Yearbook