Catalogue Entry
Johnson’s daughter, Ethel, was born in May 1870, and it is not surprising that Johnson would use her (but not exclusively) as a model for the many pictures of young girls in interiors—playing with dolls, warming their hands by a stove, reading, sleeping. Such pictures often include the same furniture, such as the prie dieu (church prayer bench or kneeler) seen in Family Cares and The Tea Party. Because they were genre paintings, not portraits, Johnson freely renders the facial features. Thus, it is not surprising that for paintings done circa 1873, the bodily types of the girls look like three-year-olds; whereas those done circa 1878, look more like eight-years-olds. —PH
Hills, 2021: A young girl in a large brown cape stands in an interior next to a harp. Painted at a time when Italian immigration to America was on the increase, she has been assumed to be Italian in a newspaper review of 1872. Italian immigrant strolling street musicians became part of the urban scene. See John E. Zucci, Little Slaves of the Harp: Italian Child Street Musicians in Nineteenth-Century Paris, London, and New York (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992). A work dated 1869, The Young Musicians, represents two musicians, one with violin and the other with harp, while a Black man and a young girl look on.
Syracuse Journal, July 27, 1872: "The subject is nameless—the artist preferring the spectator to give it a title. It represents a girl apparently about twelve years of age, standing in the interior of a room, furnished only with a harp, a chair and cabinet; the floor is bare, the walls are bare. The spectator will most naturally inquire, what does it mean? Is this girl a harpist? She is doubtless an Italian girl, with large dark eyes, heavy dark brows, and massy hair hanging loose about her shoulders. With a sad, inquiring expression of face, she stands, little-girl like, with an old water-proof cloak hanging upon her shoulders, which conceals most of her person; even the arms and hands are concealed. The handling of this picture is free, simple and artistic."
