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Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné
Patricia Hills, PhD, Founder and Director | Abigael MacGibeny, Project Manager and Co-Author

Catalogue Entry

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Photo: © Museum Associates/LACMA
[ 13.5 Maple Sugar Camps, 1860s—Small Scenes ]info
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13.5 Maple Sugar Camps, 1860s—Small 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. 13.5.6
1907 Sale no. 47
Tasting the Sugar
Alternate titles: Study for Sugaring Off; Sugar Gatherers; The Rendering Kettle; Untitled: Sugaring Off
c.1861–65
Locale: Near Fryeburg, Maine
Oil on canvas
17 x 21 in. (43.2 x 53.3 cm)
Initialed lower left: E. J.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, Gift of Sandra and Jacob Y. Terner (1998.170.1)
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."

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. 47: "It is late afternoon in the sugar camp. The sun is just going down behind the distant hills, and the sky, seen through the tops of the maples, is ruddy with reflected light. In the foreground in an open space cleared in the snow in front of the little rude shelter of the sugar camp, where the great kettle hangs from a long pole over a large fire, a number of people, chiefly girls and children, are tasting the freshly made sugar, which one of the men is ladling from the kettle to be cooled in small pans which are handed around to the visitors."
"Signed at the lower left, E. J.
Height, 16 ½ inches; length, 21 inches"
[Annotation: “50.00”]
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. 47 (as Tasting the Sugar)]
David David Gallery, Philadelphia, until February 1965
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, February 1965 (as The Rendering Kettle)
Terry DeLapp Gallery, Los Angeles, July 1967
Chase Gallery, New York, before 1974
Dr. and Mrs. Jacob Y. Terner, Beverly Hills, California, until 1998
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1998 (by gift)
Exhibitions
1969 LACMA
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, [unknown title], November 1969–January 4, 1971.
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. 47, as Tasting the Sugar.
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 notes: Early 1970s? Not sure then of authenticity.
1998-03: Probably OK.
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. "Tasting the Sugar, c.1861–65 (Hills no. 13.5.6)." In Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=180 (accessed on May 2, 2025).