Catalogue Entry
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
Hills, 2021: The categorization of this painting in the theme 9.4 Black Groups is tentative; it is possible that this version of the painting depicts a white couple. It seems more likely that it is a Black couple because the related paintings that include the doves depict Black couples.
Henry T. Tuckerman, Book of the American Artists: American Artist Life, 1867: "One of [Johnson's] most naive conceptions is Mating. On the low roof of a farm-house a flock of pigeons are billing and cooing, strutting and puffing, every eye and feather kindled with amorous vitality—so natural and real as alone to make the picture a gem to the naturalist; while leaning against the door-post below is a buxom girl, whose air and expression, attitude and eye, are just as full of the 'hopes and fears that kindle hope' as those of the doves, while her rustic lover in shirt-sleeves, absently whittling a stick, does his courting in a like spirit of bashful desire. Altogether the story is told with inimitable truth and nature."
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