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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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Patricia Hills, taken of an image in the Brooklyn Museum Archives
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

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Hills no. 26.1.9
Child and Old Man
c.1873–85
Oil on academy board
12 3/8 x 9 7/8 in. (31.4 x 25.1 cm)
Signed lower left: E. Johnson
Description / Remarks

Hills, 2022: John I. H. Baur likely knew this work because it was photographed at the Brooklyn Museum, where he was head of the Department of Painting and Sculpture from 1936 to 1952, but it is not included in his 1940 catalogue of Johnson's work.

Markings
Verso of frame: old man bowed with grief / and boy
Provenance
Present whereabouts unknown
Related work
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Manter, Nathan H.
Record last updated January 26, 2022. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "Child and Old Man, c.1873–85 (Hills no. 26.1.9)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=399 (accessed on April 29, 2024).