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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 of Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc.
[ 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. 13.6.10
1907 Sale no. 53
The Joys of Winter
Alternate titles: Sugar Camp in the Maine Woods; Two Boys with Sled
c.1873
Locale: Near Fryeburg, Maine
Oil
19 x 16 in. (48.3 x 40.6 cm)
Initialed lower right: E.J.
Present whereabouts unknown
Description / Remarks

Hills, 2022: 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. 53: "Two young farmers, both in their shirt-sleeves, one with a straw hat on, although the ground is covered with snow, are dragging along a rough, snow-covered road a large sled, on which sits a young lad, evidently enjoying his ride. Beyond the group is a large forest, mostly of evergreen trees, the foliage of which nearly covers the winter sky, and in the foreground, on the left, is a frozen pool, in which a tiny toy boat is stranded near a half-submerged log."
"Signed at the lower right, E. J.
Height, 19 inches; width, 16 inches."
[Annotation: “55.00”]
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. 53 (as The Joys of Winter)]
Berry-Hill Galleries, New York, 1957 (as Sugar Camp in the Maine Woods)
Present whereabouts unknown
References
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. 53, as The Joys of Winter.
Antiques 1957
Berry-Hill Galleries advertisement. Antiques (September 1957), p. 201, Berry-Hill Galleries advertisement, as Sugar Camp in the Maine Woods.
Baltimore Sun 1964
The Baltimore Sun, November 1, 1964, Nov. 1, 1964: newspaper caption reads "American genre scenes of last century were forte of Eastman Johnson. Pictured is Two Boys with Sled".
Keywords
Record last updated June 2, 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 Joys of Winter, c.1873 (Hills no. 13.6.10)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=199 (accessed on April 25, 2024).