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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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[ 24.0 Adolescent Girls ]info
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24.0 Adolescent Girls

As Johnson got to know his nieces and also his daughter Ethel during their teen-aged years, he realized that they were not just genteel creatures who read books, but also smart young adults who read newspapers. Of all American artists, Johnson is perhaps the only artist (besides women artists such as Lily Martin Spencer and Mary Cassatt) who shows women reading newspapers. —PH

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Hills no. 24.0.12
1907 Sale no. 140
The Reverie
c.1872–73
Oil
30 x 24 in. (76.2 x 61 cm)
Initialed lower right: E. J.
Present whereabouts unknown
Description / Remarks

Hills, 2021: Similar to the figures in Girl at the Window and The Reverie, the figure is likely not a “little girl,” but an adolescent.

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.

MacGibeny, 2021: According to the Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, a "whatnot" is "a light open set of shelves for bric-a-brac."

1907 Estate Sale info
No. 140: "A little girl perched in an open window, resting her extended right hand on a whatnot, gazes pensively out on the sunlit landscape. She is dressed in a loose soft muslin dress, and her brown hair falls in a single tress behind her shoulders."
"Signed at the lower right, E. J.
Height, 30 inches; width, 24 inches."
[Annotation: “40.00 / Cogswell”]
Provenance
William Browne Cogswell, Syracuse, New York, husband of the artist's niece, Mary Naomi Johnson Cogswell (daughter of the artist's brother Reuben), February 27, 1907 (by purchase)
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. 140 (as The Reverie)]
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. 140, as The Reverie.
Merriam-Webster 2021b
"Whatnot." Merriam-Webster, 2021.
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 Reverie, c.1872–73 (Hills no. 24.0.12)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=318 (accessed on May 7, 2024).