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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: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
[ 13.6 Maple Sugar Camps, 1860s—In the Woods ]info
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13.6 Maple Sugar Camps, 1860s—In the Woods

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. 13.6.6
1907 Sale no. 129
The Truants
Alternate title: The Shelter
c.1861–65
Locale: Near Fryeburg, Maine
Oil on academy board
23 3/8 x 27 in. (59.4 x 68.6 cm)
Initialed lower right: E.J—
National Gallery of Art, Corcoran Collection (Museum purchase, William A. Clark Fund, Gallery Fund and through the gift of Louise S. Thompson) (2014.136.90)
Description / Remarks

Hills, 2021: The evidence for the date 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. 129: "Two small boys, who are evidently sent out to gather the sap from the large maple trees, are hiding in the hollow of a great trunk which extends from the foreground out of the picture at the top, and are engaged in playing cards there. The snow is partly melted from the ground, and they have drawn their little sled with its barrel and wooden funnel close to the foot of the tree, where two spigots drip sap into a birch bark box. In the distance, beyond the corner of the wood, is a red farmhouse, and in the horizon a mountain range capped with snow."
"Signed at the lower right, E. J.
Height, 22 inches; length, 26 1/2 inches"
[Annotation: “37.50”]
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. 129 (as The Truants)]
Mrs. Edward Ward McMahon, Pelham, New York
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, May 1962–1963
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., March 27, 1963 (purchased; accession no. 63.11)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia, 2014 (by transfer)
Exhibitions
1907a Century Association
Century Association, New York, Memorial Exhibition of Eastman Johnson, February 9–13, 1907, as The Truants.
1963 Corcoran Gallery of Art
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Progress of an American Collection, October 25–December 29, 1963, as The Shelter.
1977 Committee on House Administration of the United States House of Representatives
The Committee on House Administration of the United States House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., Exhibition of 19th Century American Landscape Painting, January 31–March 31, 1977, as The Shelter.
1977 Grand Rapids Art Museum
Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Themes in American Painting, October 1–November 30, 1977. (Sweeney 1977), no. 40, repro, as The Shelter.
1980 Everson Museum
Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York, Snow Show, January 18–March 16, 1980, no. 46, as The Shelter.
1980 London Regional Art Gallery
London Regional Art Gallery, London, Inaugural Exhibition: The Seven Ages of Man, May 3–June 15, 1980, unnumbered cat, repro, as The Shelter.
2004 Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, Sugaring Off: The Maple Sugar Paintings of Eastman Johnson, January 18–April 18, 2004. (Allen 2004a). Traveled to: Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California, May 11–August 1, 2004.
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. 129, as The Truants.
Hoopes 1963
Hoopes, D. F. "The Shelter by Eastman Johnson." CGA Bulletin 13, no. 3 (October 1963), p. 17 illus.
Corcoran Gallery of Art 1966
A Catalogue of the Collection of American Paintings in the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Vol. 1, Painters Born before 1850. Washington, DC: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1966, p. 114 illus.
Phillips 1966
Phillips, Dorothy W. A Catalogue of the Collection of American Paintings in the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Vol. 1: Painters Born Before 1850. Washington, DC: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1966, pp. 114 illus., p. 115, as The Shelter.
Shorewood Publishers 1968
Fifty American Masterpieces: Two Hundred Years of American Painting. New York: Shorewood Publishers, 1968.
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.
Cash 2011
Sarah Cash, ed. American Paintings to 1945. Washington, DC: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 2011, p. 304 illus.
Hills Examination / Opinion
Examination date(s): 1969-09
Examination notes: Fresh browns, whites and blues; pastel-like quality.
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. "The Truants, c.1861–65 (Hills no. 13.6.6)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=191 (accessed on April 25, 2024).