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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: Kramer Gallery
[ 26.2 Nantucket Genre—Outdoors ]info
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26.2 Nantucket Genre—Outdoors

In June 1869 Johnson married Elizabeth Buckley of Troy, New York, and the following summer he and his wife and their baby, Ethel, went to Nantucket, Massachusetts for the season. Johnson responded enthusiastically to Nantucket, which seemed to be filled with characters and activities that appealed to him, and the couple returned to the island each summer. Beside painting genre scenes of men, women, and children both indoors and outside, Johnson launched a major theme—the cranberry harvest—a time in the fall when the whole community turned out to pick the wild cranberries ripening in the bogs of Nantucket. Johnson made at least eighteen studies before crafting his major painting, The Cranberry Harvest, which was exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1880. —PH

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Hills no. 26.2.7
1907 Sale no. 116
Waiting for Father
c.1875–80
Locale: Nantucket, Massachusetts
Oil on board
21 7/8 x 17 15/16 in. (55.6 x 45.6 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. 116: "A little girl, perched astride the top rail of a board fence, is evidently waiting for the approach of someone, turning her head over her shoulder and supporting herself with her right hand. Close by her side stands her mother, leaning both elbows on the fence and gazing intently in the same direction. In the foreground grow flowering shrubs and low bushes with a cucumber vine and a single hill of Indian corn."
"Signed at the lower right, E. J.
Height, 22 inches; width, 18 ½ inches."
[Annotation: “32.50”]
Markings
Inscribed on verso: Waiting for Father; Waiting for Father, from/Mrs. W. J. Cochrane/May 22, 1915
Labels
Label on verso, upper left: 34
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. 116 (as Waiting for Father)]
Possibly Mrs. W. J. Cochrane, c. 1915
Private collection, by June 2001
Kramer Gallery, Inc., Minneapolis, by June 2001
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. 116, as Waiting for Father.
Hills Examination / Opinion
Examination date(s): 2001-06-09
Examination notes: Sky: scumbled, thinly painted white over brown background. Water seen between rails. Uniformly painted with buttery strokes—slippery. No underpainting left. Yellow and green cucumber. Not strong graphite lines (1880s?), except for edge of girl's left heel; around neck; fold of arm. Thin cloth over back.
Hills opinion letter: June 25, 2001 view »
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. "Waiting for Father, c.1875–80 (Hills no. 26.2.7)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=235 (accessed on May 3, 2024).