When John Graver Johnson was born in 1841, there were no high expectations for his future. His father, a blacksmith, died before John finished high school. His mother did sewing to help support the family. The Johnsons were hardworking people without the advantages of wealth, college or social status. Yet, their son exceeded all expectations. By the time of his death in 1917, John G. Johnson was hailed by The New York Times as "the greatest lawyer in the English-speaking world".
He argued one hundred sixty-eight cases at the Supreme Court and thousands of cases in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Twice he was offered a seat on the Supreme Court; twice he declined the honor. His clients included J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick and the Pennsylvania Railroad, then the world’s largest corporation two times over. The firm he founded in 1863 still exists under the name Saul Ewing.
In his last two decades, Johnson amassed a world-class collection of some 1,300 paintings, all of them stored in his home on South Broad Street. His walls could only hold so many paintings and many were in stacks on the floor. He bought the house next door and created a museum for his collection. This is where he wanted them to remain, and he said so in his will, which donated the entire collection to the citizens of Philadelphia.
After the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s building opened in Fairmount in 1928, it found itself with plenty of empty, fireproof gallery space on its hands. So its officials and lawyers launched a campaign to acquire Johnson’s collection. By 1933 they came up with the necessary extraordinary reason to move the collection: They convinced Philadelphia’s Orphans Court that the paintings were threatened because Johnson’s home and adjacent museum wasn't fireproof. The buildings were condemned and the Art Museum got the 1,300 paintings. His collection, which forms the core of early European works at the museum, includes masterpieces from artists such as Bosch, Botticelli, Titian, Rembrandt, Jan Steen, Manet, and Claude Monet.
One of Johnson's clients was another well known Philadelphia art collector, Albert Barnes, who intended his collection remain in the home he built for it in Merion Station. As with Johnson, Barnes collection eventually moved against his wishes, as stated in his will.
1913 photo Museum on S Broad St Inside his mansion, c. 1936
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