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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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23.0 Children and Pets

A traditional theme in genre painting, but also seen in children’s portraits, are children interacting with their pets. Pets, then and now, were given to children to encourage responsibility and even empathy toward other creatures. Pictures in the theme Maine Haylofts (13.7) also include children and pets. —PH

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Hills no. 23.0.13
Baur no. 104a
Girl Holding Rabbit
Alternate title: possibly Child and Rabbit
c.1878
Oil on academy board
13 x 10 1/2 in. (33 x 26.7 cm)
Signed lower right: E. Johnson '70 (?)
Description / Remarks

MacGibeny, 2021: According to John I. H. Baur's 1940 catalogue entry for this painting, "The second figure of the date is obscure." It is likely that the inscribed date is '78, based on the inscribed date of Girl with a Rabbit (Private collection, Palo Alto, California). Johnson painted several versions of this subject, for which his daughter Ethel was the likely model; perhaps she had a rabbit as a pet that year, when she was eight.

Provenance
William Macbeth, Inc., New York, by 1940
Present whereabouts unknown
Exhibitions
1907a Century Association
Century Association, New York, Memorial Exhibition of Eastman Johnson, February 9–13, 1907, [possibly, as Child and Rabbit].
References
Baur 1940
Baur, John I. H. An American Genre Painter: Eastman Johnson, 1824–1906. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, 1940. Exhibition catalogue (1939 Brooklyn Museum), p. 64, no. 104a, as Girl Holding Rabbit.
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, p. 266 [possibly, as Child and Rabbit].
Keywords
Record last updated March 22, 2022. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "Girl Holding Rabbit, c.1878 (Hills no. 23.0.13)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=361 (accessed on March 28, 2024).