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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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[ 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. 13.6.7
1907 Sale no. 99
A Boy in the Maine Woods
Alternate titles: April Woods—Logging Camp Scene; April Woods—Logging Scene; Boy in Contemplation in the Maine Woods; Boy in the Maine Woods; Logging Camp Scene
c.1861–65
Locale: Near Fryeburg, Maine
Oil on board
12 x 20 1/8 in. (30.5 x 51.1 cm)
Initialed lower right: E [once had full initials "E. J."]
Farnsworth Art Museum, Bequest of Mrs. Elizabeth B. Noyce, 1997 (97.3.23)
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. 99: "The winter logging season is over, and the snow is partly melted from the ground. With the exception of one sturdy tree which rises out of the picture at the left, all the large logs have been cut, and only small saplings and underbrush remain in the great forest. In the foreground, on the right, a youth stands with his hands in his pockets in a contemplative attitude near the smouldering embers of a fire, which has been built at the end of a split log. A few spots of wintry sky show between the early spring foliage at the top of the picture."
"Signed at the lower right, E. J.
Height, 13 inches; length, 22 inches."
[Annotation: “40.00”]
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. 99 (as A Boy in the Maine Woods)]
Francis P. Garvan
Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York, until September 5, 1967
Richard S. DuPont, Wilmington, Delaware, September 5, 1967 (by purchase)
[Sotheby's, December 3, 1992, Sale 6373, lot 21 (as Boy in the Maine Woods)]
Mrs. Elizabeth B. Noyce, Maine
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine, 1997 (by bequest)
Exhibitions
1907a Century Association
Century Association, New York, Memorial Exhibition of Eastman Johnson, February 9–13, 1907, as Boy in Contemplation in the Maine Woods.
2006 Farnsworth Art Museum
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine, Elizabeth B. Noyce Bequest Anniversary, October 22, 2006–June 17, 2007.
2008 Farnsworth Art Museum
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland Maine, Maine, Visions of America: 19th Century Paintings from the Farnsworth, December 13, 2008–March 29, 2009.
2014 Farnsworth Art Museum
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine, 19th Century Perspectives: People and the Land, January–April 2014.
2015 Society of the Four Arts
Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Florida, Maine in America: 19th & 20th Century Paintings and Sculptures from the Farnsworth, January 23–March 29, 2015.
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. 99, as A Boy in the Maine Woods.
Kennedy Quarterly 1967
The Kennedy Quarterly 7, no. 1 (March 1967), 47, no. 56.
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): 1992-11-27; 1998-07-23
Examination notes: 1992-11-27. Graphite lines along left tree; handling of paint in foreground loose: palette knife used. Face only hinted at; yellow green branches; nice atmospheric qualities going in the background. Smokey and misty.
Hills opinion letter: December 18, 1992 view »
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. "A Boy in the Maine Woods, c.1861–65 (Hills no. 13.6.7)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=196 (accessed on April 25, 2024).