I have previously written about the sculptor Adelaide Johnson’s most famous piece: The Portrait Monument, today located in the Rotunda of the Capitol. What I have not done is to look at Johnson herself, a long-time Capitol Hill resident and all-around unique character.
Born 1859 in a small town in southwestern Illinois, she began her studies in St. Louis, but moved to Chicago to begin work. While on her way to her studio one day in 1882, she fell into an unmarked elevator shaft, badly injuring herself. She was, however, able to sue those responsible, and the compensatory funds allowed her to move to Europe to study in Dresden and Rome.
Back in the United States, she became the unofficial sculptor of the suffrage movement, producing busts of the likes of Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. She moved to Washington in 1886, living first in the Northwest quadrant, where she supplemented her income as a sculptor by become a clerk in the patent office. She would later move to Capitol Hill, just northeast of the Capitol, although she would divide her time between here and Europe for most of her life.
The house soon became known as a salon, with a wide variety of people mingling. In 1896, Johnson threw a very special party. She invited twenty friends to “A White Evening,” requesting that they wear only white. The Washington Morning Times continues:
[The guests] found the drawing-room in snowy array. White cheese cloth draperies screened windows and doors, white silk cushioned the chairs, tables covered with dainty white embroidery bore crystal bowls of calla lilies, white roses and delicate traceries of smilax were set on the book shelves and before a bust of Gen. Logan in a far corner. Above a luxurious divan, on which were piled a dozen beruffled white pillows, were the famous busts of Lucretia Mott, with Quaker cap and folded kerchief, and Dr. Caroline B. Winslow, of which so much has been written.
It was, in fact, to be Johnson’s wedding. The groom was Alexander Frederick Johnson, who had, until a short time earlier, been named Alexander Frederick Jenkins; He had changed his name so Johnson would not have to. The wedding was unconventional in other ways, as well. The service itself was performed by Cora L. V. Richardson, who did so “by inspiration,” whatever that means. One of the guests was none other than Susan B. Anthony.
While Mr. Johnson continued to live in New York City, as before, Mrs. Johnson remained on Capitol Hill. Unsurprisingly, the marriage did not last and the two were divorced in 1908.
Johnson’s career was at its zenith in 1920 when the 19th amendment gave women in the United States the right to vote. In looking for a way to memorialize this moment in marble, Johnson was the obvious candidate, especially as the three women who were most worked towards this goal were no longer alive – but Johnson had sculpted them in their lifetime. Johnson was hired to recreate the busts in one imposing piece. The result was the Portrait Monument.
This sculpture, whose peripatetic movements and legend regarding its apparently unfinished nature I have previously written up, today has pride of place in the Rotunda of the Capitol