Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné

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

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Verso label and marking

[ 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. 13.5.8

1907 Sale no. 111

Luncheon at the Camp

Alternate titles: Lunch at Camp; Luncheon in the Camp; Sugaring Off: Lunch at Camp; The Sugar-Camp

c.1861–65

Locale: Near Fryeburg, Maine

Oil on composition board

16 x 26 1/4 in. (40.6 x 66.7 cm)

Initialed lower right: E.J.

Joseph H. Davenport III, Chattanooga, Tennessee

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. 111: "Two sugar makers are seated at luncheon in a small wooden shack, which has been erected as a shelter in a sugar camp. The deep snow has been cleared away from in front of the shelter, where the big kettle has been set in order to boil the sap. On the right of the hut, almost buried in the deep snow, are seen two hogsheads, one of them covered by ice, and beyond, in a desolate snow-covered landscape, is an open grove of maple trees stretching their bare branches out of the picture."
"Signed at the lower right, E. J.
Height, 16 inches; length, 26 inches."
[Annotation: “32.50”]

Markings

Inscribed on verso, upper right: 1242; upper center: Powell/70364/16 —/lunch at Camp.

Labels

Labels on verso, upper left: 33; Whitney 1972 exhibition label; upper right: "Eastman Johnson Lunch at Camp/Mr. and Mrs. Joseph H. Davenport, Jr./Lookout Mountain, Tennessee

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. 111 (as Luncheon at the Camp)]

Possibly Mr. Jack Reeves, Cap-à-l'Aigle, Charlevoix, Canada

Mr. Bonner, Cap-à-l'Aigle, Charlevoix, Canada, possibly acquired from the above, by 1931

Private collection (by descent)

Chapellier Galleries, New York, until spring 1970

Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, spring 1970

Private collection, 1971 (by purchase)

Christie's, November 18, 2015, American Paintings, lot 126; bought in

Joseph H. Davenport III, Chattanooga, Tennessee

Exhibitions

1907a Century Association

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

1972 Whitney Museum

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Eastman Johnson: Retrospective Exhibition, March 28–May 14, 1972. (Exhibition catalogue: Hills 1972a), no. 32, b/w illus., p. 51, as Lunch at 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.

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.

King 1895

King, Edward. "The Value of Nationalism in Art." The Monthly Illustrator 4, no. 14 (June 1895), p. 265, as The Sugar-Camp.

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. 111, as Luncheon at the Camp.

Art Journal 1969

The Art Journal 29, no. 2 (Winter 1969/1970).

Hills 1972a

Hills, Patricia. Eastman Johnson: Retrospective Exhibition. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1972. Exhibition catalogue (1972 Whitney Museum), no. 32, p. 51, as Lunch at Camp.

Hills 1977

Hills, Patricia. The Genre Paintings of Eastman Johnson: The Sources and Development of His Style and Themes. New York: Garland Publishing, 1977.

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.

Keywords

Subject matter:
- Maple sugar »

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. "Luncheon at the Camp, c.1861–65 (Hills no. 13.5.8)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=188 (accessed on April 25, 2024).