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Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné
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Photo: Currier Museum of Art
Black & white
Photo: Courtesy of Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York
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25.1 Women Indoors
Johnson’s wife, Elizabeth, no doubt turned his attention to representations of women alone—either in interiors or outside. Such women are often lost in thought and suggest sentient beings with an inner life. In my interviews with descendants of Johnson’s siblings, she is presented as an independent woman. Johnson painted her portrait in which she assumes the posture of a woman who thinks on her own (also see theme 31.3). —PH
Hills no. 25.1.6
Woman Polishing Glasses
Currier Museum of Art title: Reading the Bible
Alternate titles: Portrait of a Lady Polishing Her Glasses; Woman in Armchair; Woman Polishing Glasses, Seated before an Open Book. “Here Begineth [sic] the Lesson”; Woman Polishing Spectacles
1863, September
Oil on canvas
21 x 17 in. (53.3 x 43.2 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: E. Johnson./Sept. 1863
Provenance
Possibly James Wallace Pinchot
Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York, until April 1964
Henry Melville Fuller, New York, 1964 (by purchase)
Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire, 2002 (by bequest)
Exhibitions
1964 Kennedy Galleries
Kennedy Galleries, New York, 1964.1966 Cummer Gallery of Art
Cummer Gallery of Art, Jacksonville, Florida, Mid-Nineteenth Century Painting from the Collections of Henry M. Fuller and William H. Gerdts, July–August 1966. (Exhibition catalogue: Cummer Gallery 1966), no. 35, as Woman Polishing Glasses.1968 St. Paul's School
St. Paul's School, Concord, New Hampshire, 1968, as Woman Polishing Glasses.1971 Currier Gallery of Art
Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire, 19th Century American Painting from the Collection of Henry Melville Fuller, September 18–October 17, 1971, as Reading the Bible. Traveled to: Mead Art Building, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, October 27–November 24, 1971.References
Kennedy Quarterly 1964
The Kennedy Quarterly 4, no. 3 (April 1964), p. 164, as Woman Polishing Spectacles.Cummer Gallery 1966
Mid-Nineteenth Century Painting from the Collections of Henry M. Fuller and William H. Gerdts. Jacksonville, FL: Cummer Gallery of Art, 1966. Exhibition catalogue (1966 Cummer Gallery of Art), n.p., no. 35, as Woman Polishing Glasses.Keywords
- Subject matter:
Record last updated July 18, 2022. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "Woman Polishing Glasses, 1863, September (Hills no. 25.1.6)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=322 (accessed on April 20, 2024).