Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné
enlarge
Photo: The Walters Art Museum
⊠
26.1 Nantucket Genre—Indoors
In June 1869 Johnson married Elizabeth Buckley of Troy, New York, and the following summer he and his wife and their baby, Ethel, went to Nantucket, Massachusetts for the season. Johnson responded enthusiastically to Nantucket, which seemed to be filled with characters and activities that appealed to him, and the couple returned to the island each summer. Beside painting genre scenes of men, women, and children both indoors and outside, Johnson launched a major theme—the cranberry harvest—a time in the fall when the whole community turned out to pick the wild cranberries ripening in the bogs of Nantucket. Johnson made at least eighteen studies before crafting his major painting, The Cranberry Harvest, which was exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1880. —PH
Hills no. 26.1.22
Baur no. 68
Old Whalers of Nantucket
Walters Art Museum title: The Nantucket School of Philosophy
Alternate titles: A Nantucket Symposium; Nantucket School of Philosophy; Nantucket Whalers; Old Whalers at Nantucket
1887
Locale: Nantucket, Massachusetts
Oil on panel
23 1/4 x 31 11/16 in. (59.1 x 80.5 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: E. Johnson 1887
loading
Description/Remarks
Walters Art Museum website, accessed February 15, 2021: "In this work, Johnson's last dated painting of everyday life, a group of elderly men, seated around a stove in a cobbler's shop, reminisces about the past. Two years after the picture was completed, Johnson identified the philosophers: Captain Haggerty, the shoemaker; Captain Moore, the talker; and on the left, leaning on his hand, Captain Ray. The other captains, he noted, were by then already deceased."
"The Academy Exhibition," The Nation 44, April 28, 1887, p. 373: "…Old Whalers at Nantucket, No. 328, by Eastman Johnson, is a group of old salts in a bituminous sort of atmosphere, in which a wall and a door here and there may be made out in close scrutiny."
Exhibitions
National Academy of Design, New York, April 4–May 14, 1887. (Exhibition catalogue: NAD 1887), no. 328, as Old Whalers of Nantucket.
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Spring 1893, no. 157, as The Nantucket School of Philosophy, owner Edward D. Adams.
The Union League Club of New York, New York, January 12–14, 1893. (Exhibition catalogue: Union League Club of New York 1893), no. 27, as A Nantucket Symposium, loaned by Edward D. Adams.
World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, May 1–October 31, 1893. (World's Columbian Exposition 1893), no. 620, as The Nantucket School of Philosophy, lent by E. D. Adams, New York.
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York, An American Genre Painter: Eastman Johnson, 1824–1906, January 18, 1939–February 26, 1940. (Exhibition catalogue: Baur 1940), no. 68, b/w illus., Pl. XXXI, as The Nantucket School of Philosophy.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Eastman Johnson: Retrospective Exhibition, March 28–May 14, 1972. (Exhibition catalogue: Hills 1972a), no. 106, b/w illus., p. 109. Traveled to: The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, June 7–July 22, 1972; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, August 15–September 30, 1972; Milwaukee Art Center, Milwaukee, October 20–December 3, 1972.
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Revisiting the White City: American Art at the 1893 World's Fair, April 16–August 15, 1993.
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York, Eastman Johnson: Painting America, October 29, 1999–February 6, 2000. (Exhibition catalogue: Carbone and Hills 1999), no. 104, color illus., p. 231, as The Nantucket School of Philosophy. Traveled to: San Diego Museum of Fine Arts, San Diego, February 25–May 21, 2000; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, June 8–September 10, 2000.
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, The American Artist as Painter and Draftsman, 2001–02.
References
"Pictures at the Spring Academy." Harper's Weekly 31, no. 1581 (April 9, 1887), p. 254, "Eastman Johnson has a portrait of his wife, a grave and beautiful piece of work, a standing likeness of the Right Rev. Henry C. Potter, and a genre picture from Nantucket—the interior of a shoe-maker's shop patronized by a knot of old whalers."
New York: National Academy of Design, 1887. Exhibition catalogue (1887 NAD), no. 328, as Old Whalers of Nantucket.
"Fine Arts: The Academy Exhibition—II." The Nation 44, no. 1139 (April 28, 1887), p. 373, as Old Whalers at Nantucket.
Antique Japanese Armor and American Paintings. New York: Union League Club of New York, 1893. Exhibition catalogue (1893 Union League Club of New York), p. 25, no. 27, as A Nantucket Symposium.
World's Columbian Exposition. Revised Catalogue, Department of Fine Arts. Chicago: W. B. Gonkey Company, 1893. Exhibition catalogue (1893 Columbian Exposition), p. 67, no. 983, as The Nantucket School of Philosophy.
King, Edward. "The Value of Nationalism in Art." The Monthly Illustrator 4, no. 14 (June 1895), p. 268, as The Nantucket School of Philosophy.
Walton, William. "Eastman Johnson, Painter." Scribner's Magazine 40 (September 1906), p. 270, as Nantucket School of Philosophy.
Catalogue of an Exhibition of Charcoal Drawings by Eastman Johnson. New York: Kennedy Galleries, 1920. Exhibition catalogue (1920 Kennedy Galleries), p. 12, addendum “Paintings by Eastman Johnson," as Old Whalers at Nantucket.
Baur, John I. H. An American Genre Painter: Eastman Johnson, 1824–1906. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, 1940. Exhibition catalogue (1939 Brooklyn Museum), p. 63, no. 68, Pl. XXXI, as The Nantucket School of Philosophy.
Crosby, Everett U. Eastman Johnson at Nantucket: His Paintings and Sketches of Nantucket People and Scenes. Nantucket, MA, 1944, p. 15, C.28, as The Nantucket School of Philosophy.
King, Edward S., and Marvin Chauncey Ross. Catalogue of the American Works of Art, Including French Medals Made for America. Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery, 1956, p. 8, no. 28.
Hills, Patricia. Eastman Johnson: Retrospective Exhibition. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1972. Exhibition catalogue (1972 Whitney Museum), p. 109, as The Nantucket School of Philosophy.
Burns, Sarah. "Revitalizing the 'Painted-Out' North: Winslow Homer, Manly Health, and New England Regionalism in Turn-of-the-Century America." American Art 9, no. 2 (1995).
Carbone, Teresa A., and Patricia Hills. Eastman Johnson: Painting America. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum of Art, in association with Rizzoli International Publications, 1999. Exhibition catalogue (1999 Brooklyn Museum), pp. 106, 210, 229, 231, 232, illus., as The Nantucket School of Philosophy.
Carbone, Teresa A. "Eastman Johnson's Portrait of Aging New England." The Magazine Antiques 156, no. 5 (November 1999).
Ayers, Edward, et al. American Passages: A History of the United States. Forth Worth, TX: Harcourt College Publishers, 2000.
Johnston, William R. Nineteenth-Century Art: From Romanticism to Art Nouveau. Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery, 2000, p. 71, no. 68.
Sitter Biography
Sitter: Haggerty, George
Biography:
Captain George Haggerty (1808–1885).
Related work
loading
Mooers, William C.
loading
Keywords
- Subject matter:
- Stoves »
enlarge
Photo: Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia
Nantucket School of Philosophy [wood engraving by Henry Wolf]
1894
Wood engraving on white bristol board
5 x 7 in. (12.7 x 17.8 cm)
Lower left, in plate: H. Wolf/1894; lower right, in plate: E. Johnson/1887.; signed lower right, below plate: Henry Wolf
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, John S. Phillips Collection (1876.9.534)
Also owned by: Brooklyn Museum (2009.91.1); de Young Museum (1963.30.26131); Detroit Institute of Arts (F78.81); Smithsonian American Art Museum (1973.130.97)
Also owned by: Brooklyn Museum (2009.91.1); de Young Museum (1963.30.26131); Detroit Institute of Arts (F78.81); Smithsonian American Art Museum (1973.130.97)
See all Prints after Works by Johnson.
Record last updated August 24, 2021. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "Old Whalers of Nantucket, 1887 (Hills no. 26.1.22)." In Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?SystemID=387 (accessed on September 8, 2024).