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Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné
Patricia Hills, PhD, Founder and Director | Abigael MacGibeny, MA, Project Manager

Catalogue Entry

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21.1 Girls Indoors

Johnson’s daughter, Ethel, was born in May 1870, and it is not surprising that Johnson would use her (but not exclusively) as a model for the many pictures of young girls in interiors—playing with dolls, warming their hands by a stove, reading, sleeping. Such pictures often include the same furniture, such as the prie dieu (church prayer bench or kneeler) seen in Family Cares and The Tea Party. Because they were genre paintings, not portraits, Johnson freely renders the facial features. Thus, it is not surprising that for paintings done circa 1873, the bodily types of the girls look like three-year-olds; whereas those done circa 1878, look more like eight-years-olds. —PH

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Hills no. 21.1.33
1907 Sale no. 132
Child Warming Her Hands in Studio
Alternate title: possibly The Red Hot Stove
c.1879
Oil
27 1/2 x 22 1/2 in. (69.8 x 57.2 cm)
Initialed lower right: E. J.
Description / Remarks

Hills, 2021: This painting seems to have been withdrawn from the 1907 sale of Johnson's estate, perhaps because the family wanted to keep a work in which Ethel, Johnson's daughter, was the model.

Although John I. H. Baur owned and annotated a copy of the catalogue of Johnson's 1907 Estate Sale, he did not include this work in his own 1940 catalogue listing; he must have obtained it after publication.

1907 Estate Sale info
No. 132: "This is a larger study of the small composition, a black and white pastel in this collection, showing a little girl in the same attitude sitting near a red-hot stove warming her hands."
"Signed at the lower right, E. J.
Height, 27 ½ inches; width, 22 ½ inches."
[Annotation: “Out”]
Provenance
Eastman Johnson estate/Mrs. Eastman Johnson, New York, 1906 (by bequest)
[The artist's estate sale, American Art Association, New York, February 26–27, 1907, no. 132 (Child Warming Her Hands in Studio)]
Present whereabouts unknown
Exhibitions
1907a Century Association
Century Association, New York, Memorial Exhibition of Eastman Johnson, February 9–13, 1907, [possibly, as The Red Hot Stove].
References
AAA 1907b
Catalogue of Finished Pictures, Studies, and Drawings by the Late Eastman Johnson, N.A. New York: American Art Association, February 1907. Sale catalogue, n.p., no. 132, as Child Warming Her Hands in Studio.
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Keywords
Record last updated April 7, 2022. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "Child Warming Her Hands in Studio, c.1879 (Hills no. 21.1.33)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=1256 (accessed on March 29, 2024).