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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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Photo: Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine
The Party in the Maple Sugar Camp, c.1861–65 (Hills no. 13.4.5). Frame
Frame
Photo: Patricia Hills
The Party in the Maple Sugar Camp, c.1861–65 (Hills no. 13.4.5). Detail
Detail
Photo: Patricia Hills
[ 13.4 Maple Sugar Camps, 1860s—Panoramic Scenes ]info
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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. 13.4.5
The Party in the Maple Sugar Camp
Alternate titles: Party in the Maple Sugar Camp; Sugaring Off
c.1861–65
Locale: Near Fryeburg, Maine
Oil on canvas
30 x 40 in. (76.2 x 101.6 cm)
Hills: As of 1959, signed: G. Fuller; inscription removed by March 1971
Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine, The Lunder Collection (2013.159)
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."

Labels
Verso of frame, stickers: Hirschl & Adler Gallery; Whitney Museum of American Art; Private Collection courtesy of Thomas Colville Fine Art; Christie's
Provenance
Private collection, Boston, by April 1959
[Vose Galleries, Boston, April 1959]
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, November 19, 1959
Mrs. Joan Patterson, Glen Head, New York
[Christie's, June 5, 1997, Important American and European Paintings and Drawings from a Distinguished Private Collection, lot 13 (as The Party in the Maple Sugar Camp)]
Private collection
Peter and Paula Lunder
Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine, 2013
Exhibitions
1972 Whitney Museum
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Eastman Johnson: Retrospective Exhibition, March 28–May 14, 1972. (Exhibition catalogue: Hills 1972a), no. 35, color illus., p. 45, as Party in the Maple Sugar Camp. 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.
1972 Hirschl & Adler
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, Faces and Places: Changing Images of Nineteenth-Century America, December 5, 1972–January 6, 1973, no. 52, as The Party in the Maple Sugar Camp.
1973 Finch College Museum
Finch College Museum of Art, New York, Twice as Natural: 19th Century American Genre Painting, December 11, 1973–January 20, 1974, no. 44.
1974 Hirschl & Adler
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, Quality: An Experience in Collecting, November 12–December 7, 1974. (Hirschl & Adler Galleries 1974), no. 30, as The Party in the Maple Sugar Camp.
1976a Hirschl & Adler
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, The American Experience, October 27–November 27, 1976, no. 37, as The Party in the Maple Sugar Camp.
1978 Hirschl & Adler
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, American Genre Painting in the Victorian Era: Winslow Homer, Eastman Johnson, and their Contemporaries, April 8–May 6, 1978. (Exhibition catalogue: Hirschl & Adler Galleries 1978), no. 46, p. 43, as The Party in the Maple Sugar Camp.
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.
Hirschl & Adler Galleries 1972
Hirschl & Adler Galleries. Faces and Places: Changing Images of 19th Century America. New York: Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 1972, n.p., no. 52 illus., as The Party in the Maple Sugar Camp.
Hills 1972a
Hills, Patricia. Eastman Johnson: Retrospective Exhibition. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1972. Exhibition catalogue (1972 Whitney Museum), p. 45, no. 35 illus., as Party in the Maple Sugar Camp.
Luck 1973
Luck, Robert H. Twice as Natural: 19th Century American Genre Painting. New York: Finch College Museum of Art, 1973, no. 44 illus.
Hirschl & Adler Galleries 1974
Quality: An Experience in Collecting. New York: Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 1974. Exhibition catalogue (1974 Hirschl & Adler), no. 30, as The Party in the Maple Sugar Camp.
Hirschl & Adler Galleries 1978
American Genre Painting in the Victorian Era: Winslow Homer, Eastman Johnson, and their Contemporaries. New York: Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 1978. Exhibition catalogue (1978 Hirschl & Adler), p. 43, no. 46 illus., as The Party in the Maple Sugar Camp.
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.
Colby College 2013
The Lunder Collection: A Gift of Art to Colby College. Waterville, ME: Colby College, 2013, p. 94.
Hills Examination / Opinion
Examination date(s): 1971-03-15; 2014-08-02; 2018-08-11
Examination notes: 1971-03-15: [As of 1959 work was signed “G. Fuller”; signature removed by 3/1971 when Hills first saw the work.] Very free and sketchy. Scumbled at bottom, using palette knife. Pinkish browns at bottom. End of log—a juicy yellow and pink. Faces—flat pinks. Cadmium reds. Fire: red, pink and yellow. Yellow brown pink sky. Shed at right—brown sienna. Woman in center—turquoise dress. End of logs to left—pink spots. Dark umber-sienna cauldron on right and on shadow in front and man’s suite at left.

2014-08-02: Scumbling in foreground (rose, peach, light brown).
Keywords
Record last updated November 26, 2021. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "The Party in the Maple Sugar Camp, c.1861–65 (Hills no. 13.4.5)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=178 (accessed on May 2, 2024).