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
Crosby, 1944, p. 13: "Map on wall is inscribed, Nantucket. It has been stated that Capt. Baxter posed for the Squire, that John Fealey, an Irishman, posed for the farmer; although it has also been claimed that he was Jim Folsom." [The latter identification is correct; as noted by Baur, p. 51, it was provided by Johnson's niece Mrs. Edmonds.]
Baur 1940, p. 62: "An almost precisely identical version, which has not been located, is reproduced in William Walton, "Eastman Johnson, Painter," Scribner's, vol. 40, 1906, p. 271."
American Art Association sale catalogue, March 15–16, 1906: "An old gentleman in his old-fashioned dining room is standing by the sideboard, a glass of sherry in his hand, in which action he is imitated by a coachman standing near, who has apparently been invited to refresh himself after a long drive. The interior, with its mahogany furniture, corner cupboard and other characteristic objects, suggests a New England dwelling of superior type, and recalls the days when hospitality of this sort was not uncommon."
- Subject matter:
- Top hats »
Sheet: 36 1/8 x 28 1/8 in. (91.7 x 71.4 cm)
Also owned by: American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts (448193); The Brooklyn Museum, New York (1999.147); The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California (86.35.7); Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis (two impressions: P.5,836 and P.6,346); Nantucket Historical Association, Nantucket, Massachusetts (1998.0064.001); Princeton University Art Museum, New Haven, Connecticut (2009-76); Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, Winterthur, Delaware (1978.0033)
See all Prints after Works by Johnson.