Rev. Lyman Hotchkiss Atwater (1813-1883)

Eastman Johnson's portrait of the Reverend Lyman Hotchkiss Atwater (1888) depicts a prominent American Presbyterian theologian and professor at Princeton who was known for his conservative opposition to Darwin's evolutionary theory. Johnson's portrait commission from the academic and religious establishment complemented his better-known portraits of secular figures, and his ability to render the authority and intellectual seriousness of such subjects was fully engaged in depicting this prominent divine. The portrait documents a significant figure in American religious and intellectual history.

Johnson renders the theologian with the direct, dignified approach appropriate to a significant ecclesiastical and academic figure. His confident tonal modeling creates a portrait of authority and intellectual presence without the rhetorical grandeur of official portraiture. The clerical bearing and academic status of the sitter are conveyed through posture and expression as much as through any specific attribute of his professional identity.