John Christen Johansen

While a member of the faculty of the Art Institute he met, and later wed, recognized portraitist M. Jean McLane (1878–1964).

Leaving Chicago in 1919, Johansen moved to Paris, where he studied at the Académie Julian where he learned academic technique while being exposed to the ideas of modernism.

He maintained friendships with other artists including James Abbott McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent.

At the conclusion of World War I, Johansen was commissioned by the U.S. government to document the signing of the Treaty of Versailles which today hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

[2] He died in New Canaan, Connecticut on 23 May 1964, at the age of 87, and was buried at Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago.