Catalogue Entry
In the late eighteenth century the “fancy” figure developed as a genre of painting. These figures were meant to be picturesque renderings of children, such as girls selling flowers, boys engaged in chores, or old men whose physiognomy suggests either their faith or their defiance of death. Often such pictures had a moralizing undercurrent. Johnson did a few such figures, sometimes European figures dressed in quaint local costumes but in keeping with his times he moved toward realism. —PH
Hills, 2021: In my opinion letter of July 26, 1990, I wrote that this work "may be" the work listed by Baur (no. 130). I now believe that it is the Baur no. 130 work.
MacGibeny, 2021: Note that according to John I. H. Baur, An American Genre Painter: Eastman Johnson, 1824–1906, 1940, the painting was signed lower right: E. J. E. Johnson — 63, but no recto inscription was visible at the time of Hills's examination in 1990. Additionally, according to the Hood Museum of Art, no inscriptions on the verso of the canvas are visible due to the canvas having been relined.
Verso of frame, in black marker or crayon: #B‑1 [B‑1 circled]; verso of frame, in red marker: # B‑1; stamp on verso of canvas: Prepared by [?]/New York
