Catalogue Entry
This theme presents finished works in charcoal and pastel, often with touches of white chalk. (Note that the word “crayon” has often been used in the historical evidence; see Technical Information on Johnson's Practices.) When related to specific paintings, such works are likely to have been done after the finished paintings for a patron, or for exhibition and sale. These works may have originated using a transfer technique–from painting to drawing or from drawing to painting.
As Sheldon Keck wrote in “A Use of Infra-Red Photography in the Study of Technique,” Technical Studies in the Field of the Fine Arts, 1941:
Johnson's procedure, as thus reconstructed, seems to have been to prepare carefully in advance of his painting a drawing of the whole or of important parts. In this he determined as well the modelling and chiaroscuro to be used in his painting. He next traced the drawing and transferred the outline to the picture priming. He diligently followed this outline in his application of paint. The drawing of the "Girl with Glass" of which a painted version appears in "The New Bonnet" illustrates this conclusion. The measurements of the drawn and painted figures coincide and the infra-red photograph reveals the guide lines in the painting.
—PH
MacGibeny, 2022: Johnson sold this drawing to the American Art-Union in 1849, immediately before leaving for Europe with his friend and fellow artist George Henry Hall to learn to paint. The American Art-Union, an influential organization promoting American art, distributed it to a subscriber through the Art-Union's annual lottery the following year.
Eastman Johnson letter to Andrew Warner, Corresponding Secretary of the American Art-Union, August 3, 1849 (quoted in Patricia Hills, The Genre Paintings of Eastman Johnson, 1977, p. 31): "I am not aware whether the Art-Union is in the habit of purchasing drawings in black and white merely & I venture to send these more from my present necessity than from any disposition to exhibit attempts in what is generally considered an unsatisfactory and imperfect method of making pictures. The price for the drawing of 'The Sweeps' which I have set at $50.00 for that from [sic] 'The Honey Moon' $75.00."
Mary Bartlett Cowdrey, American Academy of Fine Arts and American Art Union, Vol. II, 1953: "A drawing in crayons. Chimney-sweeps lounging beside a wall."
- Subject matter:
- Sweepers »