Catalogue Entry

Hills, 2021: This painting shares a setting with Johnson's painting "There's No Place Like Home."

The Nation, "Fine Arts: The Sixth Annual Exhibition of the Artists' Fund Society of New York," November 23, 1865: “How charming is ‘The Country Home,' after all! A visitor to the gallery, presumably an acquaintance of the artist, called it, in our hearing, before he opened the catalogue, ‘The Maine Kitchen.’ That may well be its alias. There is a window through which you can see the green fields, and by the window an old dame is at work. The window is right at the side of the kitchen chimney. There is no high mantel shelf, but the lintel over the fire-place advances from the wall above, and on it are a few shells, big ‘trumpet conchs,’ and others. The wall has been covered with a paper of rather good pattern, but over the chimney an injury is repaired with newspapers, or else the newspapers are wanted there for their own sake, for the wall is covered with them. On the floor is what seems to be a ‘store carpet,’ but it is almost hidden by home-made rugs, made of rags which have been dyed bright colors. The rug in front of the hearth is of excellent design, whoever wove it; whether she saw the design and had the taste to admire and copy it, or imagined the design and had the skill to embody it, she is an artist, and if it is original with her, she ought to be receiving a reasonable salary as a designer in some large carpet manufactory.”

The Round Table, October 14, 1865: "Mr. Avery has at his rooms a late picture by Mr. Eastman Johnson, which shows the artist really advancing, as must be the case with so unwearied a student. The subject is the interior of a farm-house in Maine—which state, by the way, the artists are gradually finding out, and whose scenery we shall probably soon see painted until it is made as familiar as that of the White Mountains—and Mr. Johnson has given us a picture of it, in all its quaint simplicity, as careful and accurate as any that Frère ever painted of a French peasant's cottage. The wall over the large fire-place is covered with newspaper, in default of wall-paper proper, and before the hearth is a home-made rug, which in pattern and color would not lose by being put beside Indian work. We think this circumstance worth noticing. So strikingly good are the color and design of this rug, that we at first took it for a faded bit of Smyrna or Persian carpet, which we supposed had stopped at this humble home on its way to the rag-bag; but it is really a bit of home-made work, put together out of scraps and clippings of woolen cloth; and either from the same house, or from another near by, the artist brought a cushion, a curious affair--a fluffy, brioche-shaped, comfortable old thing, but having the same charm of color. Odd, isn't it? For these simple people, that made the rug and it, have probably never heard the first word about design, or color, or art of any kind, and never heard of any Titian, or Veronese, or Indian but the great divine One who is just now painting our woods and fields with such glorious color as makes Venice paltry. An old lady sits at the window sewing, and we look out upon the field where the reapers are drawing their work to a close in the long golden afternoon. It is an idyl of rustic peace, with which the artist has felt such true sympathy that we must reckon him, as we have indeed this long time, poet as well as painter: a true American singer, with not a note of Europe in his song."