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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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[ 21.2 Girls Outdoors ]info
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21.2 Girls Outdoors

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

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Hills no. 21.2.3
1907 Sale no. 89
The Wild Flowers
Alternate titles: possibly The Little Flower Girl; possibly The Little Flower-Girl; The Wildflower
c.1862–79
Oil
15 1/2 x 13 in. (39.4 x 33 cm)
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. 89: "A little girl, basket in hand, is crouching in the rich grass near the foot of a large tree picking wild flowers. The sunshine falls strongly upon the little figure, flecking it here and there with brilliant spots of light, and relieving it against a deep shadow beyond. Farther away the pasture is bounded by a rough fence, partly overgrown by bushes, separating it from a sunlit field of ripened grain which extends away to an irregular line of trees in the horizon."
"Height: 15 ½ inches; width, 13 inches."
[Annotation: “62.50”]
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. 89 (as The Wild Flowers)]
Possibly E. C. Moore, by 1864
Possibly Moore's Art Rooms, New York, 1874 (as The Little Flower-Girl)
Possibly J. Y. Culyer, by 1875
Present whereabouts unknown
Exhibitions
1864 Yonkers Sanitary Fair
Yonkers Sanitary Fair, Yonkers, New York, February 15, 1864, no. 16, [possibly, as Girl with Flowers].
1874 Moore's Art Rooms
Moore's Art Rooms, New York, 1874, [possibly, as The Little Flower-Girl].
1875 Brooklyn Art Association
Brooklyn Art Association, Brooklyn, New York, November 29–December 11, 1875, no. 146, [possibly, as The Little Flower-Girl], owner J. Y. Culyer.
1907a Century Association
Century Association, New York, Memorial Exhibition of Eastman Johnson, February 9–13, 1907, as The Wildflower.
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. 89, as The Wild Flowers.
Douglass 1999
Douglass, Julie M. "Lifetime Exhibition History." 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, pp. 260–61 (as Girl with Flowers and The Little Flower Girl).
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. "The Wild Flowers, c.1862–79 (Hills no. 21.2.3)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=297 (accessed on April 24, 2024).