Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné

Patricia Hills, PhD, Founder and Director | Abigael MacGibeny, MA, Project Manager

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Photo: Courtesy the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

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Photo: Patricia Hills

Detail

Photo: Patricia Hills

Detail

Photo: Patricia Hills

[ 13.4 Maple Sugar Camps, 1860s—Panoramic Scenes ]

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13.4 Maple Sugar Camps, 1860s—Panoramic Scenes

The making of maple sugar was a traditional industry for Maine people, as it still is today. Johnson specifically traveled to Maine, his birthplace, in the early spring of the early 1860s to study and watch farmers as they tapped the trees, gathered sap, and then set up camps to boil the sap down to thick, sweet maple syrup. As scholar Brian Allen has pointed out, during the Civil War years, maple syrup was a patriotic alternative to the sugar cane sugar of Southern plantations [See Allen 2004]. Allen quotes the Philadelphia physician and abolitionist Benjamin Rush, who said in 1792: “I cannot help contemplating a maple sugar tree without a species of veneration, for I behold in it a happy means of rendering commerce and slavery of African brethren in sugar islands as unnecessary” [See Allen 2004, p. 47].

The camps became hubs of dancing, flirting, and jocular humor, and included children mingling with adults. Although Johnson worked on making sketches for years, he never completed a finished version of the “larger & more pretenscious [sic] sugaring picture” that he wrote to patron John Coyle he had planned to make. —PH

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Hills no. 13.4.3

Baur no. 42 / 1907 Sale no. 135

A Different Sugaring Off

c.1861–65

Locale: Near Fryeburg, Maine

Oil on canvas

17 x 32 in. (43.2 x 81.3 cm)

Initialed lower left: E.J.

de Young Museum - Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd (1979.7.63)

Description / Remarks

Hills, 2021: The evidence for the date range of 1861–65 is a letter from Johnson to patron John Coyle dated March 13, 1864. Johnson states that he plans to do a "larger & more pretenscious" [sic] sugaring picture and is "starting for the country to make studies for a month or six weeks"; that this is his fourth annual trip to Maine to do so; and that he "hope[s] to paint it next autumn & winter."

Baur 1940, p. 61: "The rather odd title was probably given to this picture at the time of the Eastman Johnson Sale (catalogue no. 135) in 1907, to distinguish it from the many other Sugaring Offs in the same sale."

1907 Estate Sale

No. 135: "This is a festival in a sugar camp on the occasion of sugaring off. Mr. Johnson was very interested in the operation of sugar making, and found in the camps a large number of picturesque motives for his brush. He spent three months yearly for five seasons in studying the life of the camps, and has recorded types and customs which are fast disappearing. The incidents represented in this picture are the dancing and merrymaking at the time of sugaring off, and a large party of men and women are enjoying themselves, some dancing to the playing of fiddlers perched on a woodpile, others love-making and others gossiping."
"Signed at the lower left, E. J.
Height, 17 inches; length, 32 inches"
[Annotation: “175.00 /A. C. Zabriskie /in Whitney genre show lent by Christian A. Zabriskie”]

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. 135 (as A Different Sugaring Off)]

Andrew C. Zabriskie, February 27, 1907 (by purchase)

Christian A. Zabriskie, Barrytown Corners, New York, by 1935, until 1970 (by descent)

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, 1970

Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York, 1970 until February 1971

John D. Rockefeller 3rd and Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller, New York, February 1971 until 1979

de Young Museum - Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, April 5, 1979 (by gift)

Exhibitions

1935 Whitney Museum

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, American Genre: The Social Scene in Paintings and Prints (1800–1935), March 26–April 29, 1935. (Whitney Museum 1935), no. 65, owner Christian A. Zabriskie.

1971 Kennedy Galleries

Kennedy Galleries, New York, American Masters, Eighteenth to Twentieth Centuries, 1971, no. 19.

1972 Whitney Museum

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Eastman Johnson: Retrospective Exhibition, March 28–May 14, 1972. (Exhibition catalogue: Hills 1972a), no. 36, b/w illus., p. 66, as A Different Sugaring Off. Traveled to: The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, June 7–July 22, 1972; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, August 15–September 30, 1972; Milwaukee Art Center, Milwaukee, October 20–December 3, 1972.

1976 San Francisco

San Francisco, San Francisco, 1976, no. 82.

1979 M. H. de Young Memorial Museum

M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, Eastman Johnson: Seven Paintings by the Highly Regarded Nineteenth-Century American Artist, December 1979–January 1980. (M. H. de Young Memorial Museum 1979).

1998 FAMSF

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California, A Feast for the Eye, September 26–December 13, 1998.

References

Johnson, Eastman 1864b

Eastman Johnson letter to John Coyle, March 13, 1864, Johnson states that he plans to do a "larger & more pretenscious [sic]" sugaring picture and is "starting for the country to make studies for a month or six weeks"; that this is his fourth annual trip to Maine to do so; and that he "hope[s] to paint it next autumn & winter," quoted in Selection of Artist’s Letters 1999.

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. 135, as A Different Sugaring Off.

American Art News 1907b

"Eastman Johnson Sale." American Art News 5, no. 20 (March 2, 1907).

Whitney Museum 1935

American Genre: The Social Scene in Paintings and Prints (1800–1935). New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1935. Exhibition catalogue (1935 Whitney Museum), p. 19, no. 65.

Baur 1940

Baur, John I. H. An American Genre Painter: Eastman Johnson, 1824–1906. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, 1940. Exhibition catalogue (1939 Brooklyn Museum), 61, no. 42, as A Different Sugaring Off.

Hills 1972a

Hills, Patricia. Eastman Johnson: Retrospective Exhibition. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1972. Exhibition catalogue (1972 Whitney Museum); (1972 Whitney Museum), no. 36, p. 66, as A Different Sugaring Off.

Mandel 1977b

Mandel, Patricia. "Museum Notes: Selection VII: American Paintings from the Museum's Collection, c. 1800–1930." Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design (April 1977).

Czestochowski 1982

Czestochowski, Joseph S. The American Landscape Tradition: A Study and Gallery of Paintings. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1982, p. 114.

Selection of Artist's Letters 1999

"A Selection of the Artist's Letters." In Eastman Johnson: Painting America, by Teresa A. Carbone and Patricia Hills. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum of Art, in association with Rizzoli International Publications, 1999. Exhibition catalogue.

Hills Examination / Opinion

Examination date(s): 1970-09-15; 1970-11-02; 1971-03-03; 2018-02-27

Examination notes: 1970-09-15: Very sketchy: White, rapidly—erratically brushed at right—also through trees at left. Thinly painted. Pale browns. Typical touches of red—fire—vest of man at right. Aqua on girl dancing and sleeve of woman in "sly drink" scene. Smokey, lazy background.

1970-11-02: Tone is much more pinkish brown—thinly painted through trees. Several anecdotes going on.

Keywords

Subject matter:
- Maple sugar »

Record last updated June 30, 2022. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.

Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "A Different Sugaring Off, c.1861–65 (Hills no. 13.4.3)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=174 (accessed on April 25, 2024).