The John G. Johnson Collection

The John G. Johnson Collection is one of the finest groups of paintings assembled by an individual in the United States, containing masterpieces by Italian, Flemish, Dutch, German, Spanish, French, and English artists. The collection of more than 1,200 paintings was bequeathed to the citizens of Philadelphia by noted lawyer and collector John G. Johnson in his will of 1914—with the obligation that the city construct a gallery. In February of 1917, Johnson added a codicil to his will asking the city to maintain the collection in his home on South Broad Street. After Johnson died in April of that year and the paintings became the property of the city, an exhibition was planned to show part of the collection to the public. In 1920, the Museum (then called the Pennsylvania Museum) exhibited works from the collection at Memorial Hall, drawing more than 100,000 visitors. During the exhibition, the city began plans to build a separate museum for the Johnson collection. However, the project soon fizzled, and, as Johnson’s will had directed, his home was opened as a gallery in 1923. Restrictions of space meant the collection had to be rotated; thus many of the paintings were not always on view.

Johnson’s house proved impractical as a public space, but the Museum’s new building on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway was soon ready to open its doors. Hamilton Bell, the first curator of the Johnson Collection, concurrently held the position of assistant director of the Museum. Consequently, a number of Johnson’s works were included in the Museum’s Inaugural Exhibition in 1928. Many more works went on view in 1931, when the Museum opened its medieval period rooms and galleries, installed by Director Fiske Kimball, who combined historical architectural settings with works of art. Finally, in 1933, the Court of Common Pleas approved the transfer of the entire collection to the Museum’s building on Fairmount. But even there, the various schools of painting in the Johnson collection had to be rotated. In 1939, the collection was assigned separate spaces in the Museum, and in 1941 all of the pictures were reinstalled. The galleries were again rearranged in 1976. In 1989, the court authorized the Museum’s plan to integrate galleries of the Johnson Collection with the Museum’s own holdings, allowing for a more unified presentation of European art between the fourteenth and the late-nineteenth centuries. The most recent reinstallation of the early European paintings of the collection occurred in 1993, when they were brought into the galleries adjacent to the medieval and early Renaissance period rooms, much as Fiske Kimball had envisioned the collection when he put together these very same spaces in 1931. Johnson’s desire that the collection remain intact was also finally fulfilled.