loading loading
Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné
Patricia Hills, PhD, Founder and Director | Abigael MacGibeny, MA, Project Manager

Catalogue Entry

enlarge
Photo: Courtesy of Sotheby’s, Inc. © 2021
26.1 Nantucket Genre—Indoors

In June 1869 Johnson married Elizabeth Buckley of Troy, New York, and the following summer he and his wife and their baby, Ethel, went to Nantucket, Massachusetts for the season. Johnson responded enthusiastically to Nantucket, which seemed to be filled with characters and activities that appealed to him, and the couple returned to the island each summer. Beside painting genre scenes of men, women, and children both indoors and outside, Johnson launched a major theme—the cranberry harvest—a time in the fall when the whole community turned out to pick the wild cranberries ripening in the bogs of Nantucket. Johnson made at least eighteen studies before crafting his major painting, The Cranberry Harvest, which was exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1880. —PH

View all works in this theme »

Hills no. 26.1.18
The Reprimand
Alternate title: Reprimand
1880
Oil on board
19 x 22 1/2 in. (48.3 x 57.2 cm)
Signed and dated lower left: E. Johnson 1880
Private Collection, Stone Mountain, Georgia
Description / Remarks

MacGibeny, 2021: The subject is Captain Charles Myrick, who appears in several other Nantucket pictures by Johnson. According to the "Lifetime Exhibition History" published in Carbone and Hills, Eastman Johnson, Painting America, 1999, this painting—which is inscribed with the date 1880—was exhibited at the Powers Art Gallery, 1875-1877. It is possible that Johnson created the painting by 1875 and then inscribed the date 1880 for the Union League Club, Century Association, and National Academy of Design exhibitions in which it was shown that year.

American Art Association sale catalogue, 1899: "A stern-looking old man, with a dingy beaver on his head, sits by the fireplace leaning on his cane. Before him is a girl of fourteen or fifteen who seems to have incurred his displeasure. The faces show the most searching study of character, and both figures are painted with sober reserve. The color is agreeable, and the composition bears on its face the marks of sincerity and truthful delineation of a characteristic American phase of life in the country."

Provenance
Daniel W. Powers, Rochester, New York
[American Art Galleries, New York, January 18–20, 1899, Valuable Paintings, Sculpture, and Grand Clock selected from the Powers Art Gallery Collection, no. 39 (as The Reprimand)]
J. E. Heimerdinger, January 18, 1899 (by purchase)
McAfee Family, Pittsburgh
Sheffield Family, Connecticut
Bernard & S. Dean Levy, Inc., New York, June 1976–1978
Private collection, 1978 (by purchase)
[Sotheby's, December 3, 1998, Sale 7230, lot 127 (as The Reprimand)]
Private Collection, Stone Mountain, Georgia, December 3, 1998 (by purchase)
Exhibitions
1875 Powers' Art Gallery
Powers' Art Gallery, Rochester, New York, Paintings in the Gallery of D. W. Powers, 1875–77, no. 242, as The Reprimand.
1880b Union League Club of New York
The Union League Club of New York, New York, Monthly Art Reception, February 1880, as The Reprimand.
1880b Century Association
Century Association, New York, February 7, 1880, as The Reprimand.
1880 NAD
National Academy of Design, New York, March 30–May 29, 1880. (NAD 1880), no. 302, as The Reprimand.
References
Art Interchange 1880
"American Art News." Art Interchange 6, no. 4 (February 18, 1880), p. 31.
NAD 1880
New York: National Academy of Design, 1880. Exhibition catalogue (1880 NAD), no. 302, as The Reprimand.
Benjamin 1882
Benjamin, S. G. W. "A Representative American." The Magazine of Art 5 (November 1882), p. 485, illus.
Hopkins 1883
Hopkins, Alphonso A. The Powers Fire-Proof Commercial and Fine Art Buildings. Rochester, NY: E. R. Andrews, 1883, pp. 137-138: "Finely shown, upon an easel, The Reprimand (No. 432) wins every visitor. Eastman Johnson has here demonstrated that an American may fairly meet foreign artists their chosen field of genre painting. He so concentrates your interest upon the two figures, that not much is thought of their surroundings; yet the rude apartment is very realistic, and the fire-place and liberal chimney are sketched exceedingly well. Nothing could be more perfect than the old man and the young girl, each a study in expression most unique. The girl has been disobedient and the old man is administering reproof, to little purpose. Her attitude and look indicate smothered rebellion; she seems, as I once heard lady say, “as if she were just going to tap her foot." What a pity it is that a pretty girl can get so spunky!," as The Reprimand.
Meynell 1886
Meynell, Wilfrid. The Modern School of Art. Vol. 1. London: W. R. Howell & Co., 1886, p. 230, as The Reprimand.
AAG 1899
Valuable Paintings, Sculpture, and Grand Clock Selected from the Powers Art Gallery Collection. New York: American Art Galleries, January 1899. Sale catalogue, n.p., no. 39, as The Reprimand.
Walton 1906
Walton, William. "Eastman Johnson, Painter." Scribner's Magazine 40 (September 1906), pp. 270, 271.
Kennedy Galleries 1920
Catalogue of an Exhibition of Charcoal Drawings by Eastman Johnson. New York: Kennedy Galleries, 1920. Exhibition catalogue (1920 Kennedy Galleries), p. 12, addendum "Paintings by Eastman Johnson," as Reprimand.
Magazine Antiques 1976b
Bernard & S. Dean Levy, Inc. advertisement. The Magazine Antiques (New York) 110 (October 1976), Bernard & S. Dean Levy, Inc. advertisement.
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. 262, as The Reprimand.
Simons 2013
Simons, Benjamin. "Eastman Johnson and His Contemporaries on Nantucket." AFAnews.com [Antiques & Fine Art Magazine], January 7, 2013.
Sitter Biography
Sitter: Myrick, Charles C.
Biography:

Charles C. Myrick (1797–1883). Captain of the Nantucket coastal trading ship Abel Hoyt, 1854.

Related work
loading
Myrick, Charles
Keywords
enlarge
Photo: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Open Access
The Reprimand [etching by Walter Shirlaw]
c.1880
Etching and chine-collé on paper
Plate: 12 1/2 x 15 3/8 in. (31.8 x 39.1 cm)
Inscribed in plate, lower left: E. Johnson.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase (1974.8.1)

Also owned by: The Century Association, New York (2016.1); Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, Delaware (1978-57); Nantucket Historical Association, Nantucket, Massachusetts (2006.0027.005); National Gallery of Art, Washington (2008.115.4402); Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut (1929.260)

See all Prints after Works by Johnson.

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. "The Reprimand, 1880 (Hills no. 26.1.18)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=378 (accessed on March 28, 2024).