Outstanding original painting of World War II combat medic Arthur Meeker Walker by Danish-American portraitist John Christen Johansen, accomplished in oil on 21.75 x 27.75 stretched canvas, signed and dated in the lower left corner in paint, "John C. Johansen, 1945." Walker is portrayed in his uniform, wearing his garrison cap, with the insignia of the China-Burma-India Theater and the medical caduceus painted in the upper right. Displayed in a period frame to an overall size of 29.5 x 35.5. In very good to fine condition, with some surface wear.
John Christen Johansen (1876–1964) was a renowned Danish-American portraitist. Born in Copenhagen, he immigrated to the United States as an infant and pursued art studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he later taught from 1901 to 1911. He also studied at the Académie Julian in Paris, where he embraced academic techniques and was influenced by modernism, forming friendships with artists like James Abbott McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent.
While in France at the end of World War I, he was commissioned by the United States government to document the signing of the Treaty of Versailles; that work is now displayed in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, as is his portrait of President Woodrow Wilson. Other notable portraits include those of President Herbert Hoover, Attorney General Robert H. Jackson, and Vermont Governor Percival Clement. Johansen's works are held in the collections of esteemed institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the U.S. Capitol.
