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

Catalogue Entry

no image available
13.3 Maine Rustic/Farm, 1860s—Outdoors

In the nineteenth century, attitudes towards work changed, especially in the northern states of America. Although some artists made fun of “country bumpkins,” in general, farm work and farmers began to take on greater prestige and admiration. During the 1860s, Johnson returned to his birthplace in Maine to make studies of maple sugar production and also to seek out subjects of a rural life far removed from slavery. Barn interiors and home interiors show the families of farmers husking corn, winnowing grain, of taking a smoke. Exteriors show farmers at harvest time, loggers cutting trees or simply relaxing. In choosing scenes of rural white America Johnson was following in the tradition of Francis William Edmonds, George H. Durrie, Tompkins H. Matteson, and William Sidney Mount—a tradition popularized by the prints of Currier and Ives. —PH

View all works in this theme »

Hills no. 13.3.3
1907 Sale no. 2
The Fiddler
c.1860–68
Locale: Maine
Oil
9 x 7 in. (22.9 x 17.8 cm)
Initialed lower right: E. J.
Description / Remarks

Hills, 2022: 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. 2: "A rustic musician, whose leisure time is spent with his favorite fiddle, sits upon a log, playing a lively tune, actively beating the measure of it with his left foot. He wears a battered tall hat, a faded blue coat, brown waistcoat and trousers, and coarse cowhide boots. The light falls upon the figure strongly from the upper left, casting the face into full luminous shadow, in which the features faintly but accurately suggest intense enjoyment of the tune he is playing."
"Signed at the lower right, E. J.
Height, 9 inches; width, 7 inches."
[Annotation: “25.00”]
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. 2 (as The Fiddler)]
Present whereabouts unknown
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. 2, as The Fiddler.
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. "The Fiddler, c.1860–68 (Hills no. 13.3.3)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=144 (accessed on March 28, 2024).