Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné

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

Catalogue Entry

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[ 13.5 Maple Sugar Camps, 1860s—Small Scenes ]

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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. 13.5.10

1907 Sale no. 120

Measurement and Contemplation at the Camp

Alternate titles: possibly Winter Time; Measurement and Contemplation; Measurements and Contemplation in the Camp

c.1861–65

Locale: Near Fryeburg, Maine

Oil on paperboard

20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm)

Initialed lower right: E.J.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Bequest of Martha C. Karolik for the M. and M. Karolik Collection of American Paintings, 1815–1865 (48.435)

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

No. 120: "A large cauldron, supported on two thick logs, is boiling away in front of a lean-to wooden shanty in a sugar camp, watched by a man who is seated on a bench just inside the shelter. In the right foreground an old farmer, with shaggy hair and chin whiskers, leans against a large hogshead, his legs crossed, apparently studying through his spectacles a measure which he holds in his hands, while near him stands a companion in a contemplative attitude, both hands thrust into his trousers pockets. Beyond the group is suggested a grove of sugar maples rising out of the snow-covered ground. The group is in strong sunlight from the left."
"Signed at the lower right, E. J.
Height, 21 inches; length, 24 ½ inches."
[Annotation: “40.00”]

Provenance

[Possibly American Art Association, New York, December 6–7, 1900, Nearly 200 Modern Oil Paintings, Water Colors, and Drawings by American and Foreign Artists, no. 170 (as Winter-Time)]

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. 120 (as Measurement and Contemplation at the Camp)]

With M. Knoedler & Co., New York, 1944

With John Levy, New York, 1945

Maxim Karolik, Newport, Rhode Island, 1945 (by purchase)

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1948 (by bequest)

Exhibitions

1907a Century Association

Century Association, New York, Memorial Exhibition of Eastman Johnson, February 9–13, 1907, as Measurements and Contemplation in the Camp.

1944 Philadelphia Art Alliance

Philadelphia Art Alliance, Philadelphia, Eastman Johnson: Oil Paintings and Drawings, October 9–November 12, 1944. (Exhibition catalogue: Philadelphia Art Alliance 1944).

1956 MFA Boston

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, American Paintings, 1815-1865: One Hundred and Thirty-Six Paintings from the M. and M. Karolik Collection in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Together with Fourteen Paintings from the Private Collection of Maxim Karolik, 1956. (Exhibition catalogue: MFA Boston 1957).

1972 Whitney Museum

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Eastman Johnson: Retrospective Exhibition, March 28–May 14, 1972. (Exhibition catalogue: Hills 1972a), no. 29, b/w illus., p. 64, as Measurement and Contemplation. 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.

1999 Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York, Eastman Johnson: Painting America, October 29, 1999–February 6, 2000. (Exhibition catalogue: Carbone and Hills 1999), no. 26, as Measurement and Contemplation. Traveled to: San Diego Museum of Fine Arts, San Diego, February 25–May 21, 2000; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, June 8–September 10, 2000.

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. 120, as Measurement and Contemplation at the Camp.

MFA Boston 1957

American Paintings, 1815–1865: one hundred and thirty-six paintings from the M. and M. Karolik Collection in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, together with fourteen paintings from the private collection of Maxim Karolik. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1957. Exhibition catalogue (1956 MFA Boston), p. 74, no. 102.

MFA Boston 1969

American Paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts. Vols. 1 and 2. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1969, "Painted in the early 1860's".

Hills 1972a

Hills, Patricia. Eastman Johnson: Retrospective Exhibition. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1972. Exhibition catalogue (1972 Whitney Museum), p. 64, no. 29, illus., as Measurement and Contemplation.

Carbone and Hills 1999

Carbone, Teresa A., and Patricia Hills. Eastman Johnson: Painting America. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum of Art, in association with Rizzoli International Publications, 1999. Exhibition catalogue (1999 Brooklyn Museum), p. 55, no. 26, as Measurement and Contemplation.

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): 1970-10-27

Examination notes: A combo of close detail (focus) and hazy, unfocused quality (cf. Eakins). Squiggly white paint on right—looks good. Scumbling at bottom foreground. Relatively smoothened faces. Use of outlines to define suspenders, shoes, wrinkles of faded blue trousers. Glasses on man at right dressed in faded light browns. Light is faint and not strong (thin winter light). Hazy background. Figure in background is watching a boiling pot.

Keywords

Subject matter:
- Maple sugar »

Record last updated May 26, 2022. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.

Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "Measurement and Contemplation at the Camp, c.1861–65 (Hills no. 13.5.10)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=186 (accessed on April 19, 2024).