During the 1860s Johnson painted Black men, women, and children that bestow on them dignity, intelligence, and grace. Many in his family, including his sister Harriet May and her husband Reverend Joseph May were ardent abolitionists. To Johnson, Blacks were not subjects to be ridiculed or satirized.
Note that paintings of Black women and their babies have been placed within the Mother and Child theme. Negro Life at the South and its variations have been placed in a separate category because of its historic significance as Johnson’s chef-d’oeuvre. —PH
"Editor’s Easy Chair," Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, June 1860: “The same delicacy of poetic insight which seizes the unconscious symbol and does not obtrude it, is apparent in the little picture of Johnson’s called “Mating.” A stawlwart youth, returning from the field to the farm-house, lays his rake negligently upon the roof of the low shed while he talks with the buxom, but not coarse, girl who braces herself against the house, and with head half turned in bashful consciousness of his admiration, her own beauty, and her own preference for him, amusingly affects to resist him with an indifference she can not command. But meanwhile the whole upper side of the house roof is a pigeon-house, and innumerable pigeons standing upon ledges and shelves unite their bills and coo, until the whole scene is soft with downy plumage and murmurous with the delicate voice of doves. Upon the old tub by the pump also, and on the boughs of trees, and in the nearer distance, you hear the lovely music as you watch the scene, until you feel that all nature consents to love.”
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