loading loading
Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné
Patricia Hills, PhD, Founder and Director | Abigael MacGibeny, MA, Project Manager

Catalogue Entry

enlarge
Photo: Shannon's Fine Art Auctioneers
Art and Liberty (after Louis Gallait, Art et Liberté), c.1851 (Hills no. 4.0.5). Frame
Frame
Photo: Patricia Hills
Art and Liberty (after Louis Gallait, Art et Liberté), c.1851 (Hills no. 4.0.5). Detail
Detail
Photo: Patricia Hills
Art and Liberty (after Louis Gallait, Art et Liberté), c.1851 (Hills no. 4.0.5). Detail
Detail
Photo: Patricia Hills
Art and Liberty (after Louis Gallait, Art et Liberté), c.1851 (Hills no. 4.0.5). Detail
Detail
Photo: Patricia Hills
Art and Liberty (after Louis Gallait, Art et Liberté), c.1851 (Hills no. 4.0.5). Detail
Detail
Photo: Patricia Hills
Art and Liberty (after Louis Gallait, Art et Liberté), c.1851 (Hills no. 4.0.5). Inscription
Inscription
Photo: Patricia Hills
Art and Liberty (after Louis Gallait, Art et Liberté), c.1851 (Hills no. 4.0.5). Verso
Verso
Photo: Patricia Hills
04.0 Euro Copies after European Artists

Johnson moved to The Hague in 1851. On November 20, 1851, he wrote to Andrew Warner of the American Art-Union, “I am at present . . . at the Hague, where I find I am deriving much advantage from studying the splendid works of Rembrandt & a few other of the old Dutch masters, who I find are only to be seen in Holland. I shall probably continue here a good portion of the winter" [Adapted from Hills, The Genre Painting of Eastman Johnson, pp. 40–41].
He made free copies after Rembrandt, Van Dyke, and the contemporary Belgian painter Louis Gallait. He stayed in the Netherlands until 1855 and developed a profitable career as a portrait painter. —PH

View all works in this theme »

Hills no. 4.0.5
Art and Liberty (after Louis Gallait, Art et Liberté)
Alternate titles: possibly The Fiddler; The Savoyard Fiddler; The Violin Player (Savoyard Fiddler)
c.1851
Oil on canvas
13 1/2 x 10 in. (34.3 x 25.4 cm)
Initialed lower right: E.J.
Description / Remarks

Hills opinion letter, 2017: "The subject is a three-quarter view of a man in an interior, holding a violin with his left hand and a bow with his right. His is dressed for the outdoors in somewhat ragged clothing: a dark brown cloak over a white shirt. He wears a hat that one associates with the late 18th century or early 19th century. To his right (our left) is an opening in the wall that has a ledge with a pile of paper, a quill pen and ink bottle. Also are branches of leaves coming into the top part of the opening as well as patches of sunshine."

MacGibeny, 2021: Gallait's original 1849 version of Art et Liberté is at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium; his smaller version, dated 1859, is at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.

Markings
Inscribed on verso of stretcher, lower left, upside down: 13 1/2 x 10; lower right: # 34464
Labels
Label on verso, top of stretcher: Kennedy Galleries: EASTMAN JOHNSON (1824 - 1906)/THE VIOLIN PLAYER, CIRCA 1852/(SAVOYARD FIDDLER)/oil on canvas; 13 1/2 x 10 inches/Signed lower right

Label on verso, center of stretcher: unidentified: 6. Eastman Johnson American 1824 – 1906/Savoyard Fiddler 13 1/2 x 10 TO BE ILLUSTRATED/Oil on canvas signed in Monogram lower right/Ex-Collections; Mrs. Eastman Johnson, W. B. Cogswell, The Misses F. Pearl,/& Elisabeth[sic] Browning.
Provenance
William Browne Cogswell, Syracuse, New York, husband of the artist's niece, Mary Naomi Johnson Cogswell (daughter of the artist's brother Reuben)
Cora Browning Cogswell, his wife, 1921 (by bequest)
Florence Pearl and Elizabeth C. Browning, Syracuse, New York, her sisters, 1936 (by bequest)
Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York (as The Violin Player (Savoyard Fiddler))
Robert Schoelkopf Gallery, New York, by November 5, 1970
[Sotheby's, December 12, 1975, lot 5 (as The Savoyard Fiddler)]
[Shannon's Fine Art Auctioneers, Milford, Connecticut, April 28, 2005, lot 120 (as The Violin Player (Savoyard Fiddler))]
Private collection, California, by August 2017
Present whereabouts unknown
Exhibitions
1859 Washington Art Association
Washington Art Association, Washington, D.C., 1859. (Washington Art Association 1859), no. 174, [possibly, as The Fiddler, owner Eastman Johnson].
References
Washington Art Association 1859
Washington Art Association. Catalogue of the Third Annual Exhibition. Washington, DC: William H. Moore, 1859. Exhibition catalogue (1859 Washington Art Association), p. 7, no. 174 [possibly, as The Fiddler, owner Eastman Johnson].
Benjamin 1882
Benjamin, S. G. W. "A Representative American." The Magazine of Art 5 (November 1882), p. 487 [possibly, as The Wandering Fiddler].
Hartmann 1908
Hartmann, Sadakichi. "Eastman Johnson: American Genre Painter." The International Studio 34 (April 1908), p. 110 [possibly].
Art Journal 1969
The Art Journal 29, no. 2 (Winter 1969/1970), advertisement.
Maine Antique Digest 1993
Maine Antique Digest (June 1993).
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. 24, fig. 15 [as The Violin Player].
Hills Examination / Opinion
Examination date(s): 1970-11-05; 2005-04-19; 2017-09-08 (at Bonhams)
Examination notes: [DATE?]: Mostly brown and umbers and creams and greys—hardly any other colors. Head averted. Brown leaves. Cream color on wall, window sill, clothes. A sense of real light from left. Very detailed. Touches of red on face. Upper Left “Maria” 1/4 inches from top—but maybe not Maria. Label says so. (?) Impasto on right—very characteristic palette knife and stiff brush. Sleeves made picturesque—more wrinkles. Couture-like impasto. Lips, cleft chin, noes, eyes are more prominent. Coral dab at end of nose and on cheeks. In the Louis Gallait painting, 1849, Coll. Royal Museum, Brussels, the grapes are more definite; in EJ more sketchy.
Hills opinion letter: September 18, 2017 view »
Keywords
Record last updated March 30, 2022. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "Art and Liberty (after Louis Gallait, Art et Liberté), c.1851 (Hills no. 4.0.5)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=21 (accessed on March 29, 2024).