John Johnston (1753-1818), is an American painter. His father is an engraver and decorative painter. When he dies, he takes over his painting company and begins to decorate clocks, furnitures, and other objects.In 1787, he settles down in Boston as a portrait painter.

The only known still-life of the Boston portraitist, which is at the same time one of the first American paintings of the kind, is inspired by different European models. Thus for the corner of the stone support seen in a slight dive, or for the insects and the water drops recalling the fine way of the Dutchmen of the seventeenth century.