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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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Photo: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
[ 26.2 Nantucket Genre—Outdoors ]info
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26.2 Nantucket Genre—Outdoors

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. 26.2.10
1907 Sale no. 55
Child and Gardener
c.1881–85
Locale: Nantucket, Massachusetts
Oil on fiberboard
17 x 21 in. (43.2 x 53.3 cm)
Initialed lower left in sienna: E.J.
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966
Description / Remarks

Hills, 2022: Although John I. H. Baur owned and annotated a copy of the catalogue of Johnson's 1907 Estate Sale, he did not include this work in his own 1940 catalogue listing; he must have obtained it after publication.

1907 Estate Sale info
No. 55: "An old gardener, sickle in hand, stands half in shadow, half in sunlight, partly concealed under a low grape arbor near a short flight of rustic stone steps, apparently playing the well-known game of hide and seek with a little girl, who stands in the opening at the top of the steps, half afraid to discover her playmate. In the left foreground, among overhanging vines, stands a water barrel with a tin dipper, and above it is an old-fashioned wooden pump with an iron handle. On the right the roof and chimneys of a country house rise above the vines and tree tops, and beyond the little girl, seen between the bars of the fence and through the opening, is a range of hills under a sky filled with sunlit clouds."
"Signed at the lower left, E. J.
Height, 17 inches; length, 21 inches."
[Annotation: “32.50”/ “now Robert Sloan Gal/ N.Y.C./ 4/22/63” in Baur’s handwriting]
Provenance
Eastman Johnson estate/Mrs. Eastman Johnson, New York, 1906 (by bequest)
[The artist's estate sale, American Art Association, New York, February 26–27, 1907, no. 55 (as Child and Gardener)]
Robert Sloan Gallery, New York, until March 7, 1964
Joseph Herman Hirshhorn, March 7, 1964–May 17, 1966 (by purchase)
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., May 17, 1966 (by gift) (66.2606); deaccessioned October 17, 2007 but not sold
References
AAA 1907b
Catalogue of Finished Pictures, Studies, and Drawings by the Late Eastman Johnson, N.A. New York: American Art Association, February 1907. Sale catalogue, n.p., no. 55, as Child and Gardener.
Hills Examination / Opinion
Examination date(s): 1970-11-18
Examination notes: 1970-11-18: White greens and dark greens. Little girl rather crudely drawn. Picture seems very sinister. Light strikes hand and sickle and pate of old man. House—tile roof. Impasto clouds—very carelessly brushed on compared to others, e.g. Cranberry Pickers.
Manter, Nathan H.
Keywords
Record last updated April 7, 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 Gardener, c.1881–85 (Hills no. 26.2.10)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=409 (accessed on April 25, 2024).