John Seward Johnson II (April 16, 1930 – March 10, 2020), also known as J. Seward Johnson Jr. and Seward Johnson, was an American artist known for trompe-l'œil painted bronze statues. He was a grandson of Robert Wood Johnson I, the co-founder of Johnson & Johnson, and of Colonel Thomas Melville Dill of Bermuda.
He designed life-size bronze statues that were castings of living people, depicting them engaged in day-to-day activities. A large staff of technicians did the fabrication of the works he designed. Computers and digital technology often were used in the manufacturing process. Sometimes the manufacture was contracted in China. He was the founder of Grounds For Sculpture, a sculpture park and museum located in Hamilton Township, Mercer County, New Jersey.
Early life
Johnson was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey on April 16, 1930. His father was John Seward Johnson I, and his mother was Ruth Dill, the sister of actress Diana Dill, making him a first cousin of actor Michael Douglas. Johnson grew up with five siblings: Mary Lea Johnson Richards, Elaine Johnson, Diana Melville Johnson, Jennifer Underwood Johnson, and James Loring "Jimmy" Johnson. His parents divorced around 1937. His father remarried two years later, producing his only brother, Jimmy Johnson, making him an uncle to film director Jamie Johnson.
Johnson attended Forman School for dyslexics. Later, he attended the University of Maine, where he majored in poultry husbandry, but did not graduate. Johnson also served four years in the United States Navy during the Korean War.
Career
Johnson worked for Johnson & Johnson until 1962, when he was fired by his uncle Robert Wood Johnson II, who had turned the family business into one of the world's largest healthcare corporations.
Johnson maintained a studio in Princeton, New Jersey and later, another at a site in Mercerville, New Jersey that formerly had been used for the New Jersey State Fair.
His early artistic efforts focused on painting, after which he turned to sculpture in 1968. Examples of his statues include: Spring (1979), a bronze dedicated in 1979, set in the Crim Dell Woods section of the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia. Other examples of Spring castings include the East Brunswick, New Jersey public library and the Fitton Center for Creative Arts in Hamilton, Ohio. The Awakening (1980), his largest and most dramatic work, a five-part statue that depicts a giant trying to free himself from underground. The sculpture was located at Hains Point in Washington, D.C. for nearly twenty-eight years while still owned by Johnson. It was moved to Prince George's County, Maryland in February 2008 and an attempt was made by the new curator to correct some of the scale distortions of the original installation by altering some implied underground connections and placing the parts in different relationships to each other. Double Check (1982), a statue of a businessman checking his attaché case, formerly located in Liberty Plaza Park across an intersection from the World Trade Center, as part of the public space required by a zoning variance granted to the developer of the adjoining skyscraper. Widely published photographs of the debris-battered and dust-covered statue were taken following the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. The statue, scars and all, was returned to a prominent corner of the restored and renamed Zuccotti Park in 2006, again open to the public. Periodically, the statue has been adorned by tourists, pranksters, and even Occupy Wall Street protesters. Hitchhiker (1983), a statue at Hofstra University, at the California Avenue gate, near a road leading away from campus. Allow Me (Portland, Oregon) (1984), a statue of man holding an umbrella, in Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, Oregon (part of the Allow Me series). Competition (1984), a statue of Julie Wier, Fairview Heights, Illinois, chosen to represent the spirit of the people of St. Louis as winner of the "picture yourself as a work of art" contest. Dedicated on June 16, 1984 unsigned St. Louis County Library in St. Louis, Missouri. Waiting (1988), a statue of a man reading a paper, in Australia Square, Sydney, Australia Waiting (1992), a statue of a man reading a paper, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Déjeuner Déjà Vu (1994), at Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton Township, Mercer County, New Jersey, a facility founded by Johnson, is a three-dimensional restaging of Édouard Manet's painting, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe