Catalogue Entry

No. 146: "The Indian corn has been gathered and stacked in an open field adjacent to a large farmyard, and the fine autumn weather has made it possible to have the usual husking bee in the open instead of in the spacious barn, where the festival commonly takes place. Two lines of busy workers, of both sexes and all ages, are ranged along, facing each other, most of them seated, and all surrounded by the yellow corn husks. The two lines of figures diminish rapidly in perspective from the right foreground to the middle distance, and are accentuated here and there by the brilliant costumes of the girls, which, with the sunlit stacks and the mass of stalks and husks, make a passage full of rich color and strong contrasts of light and shade. Beyond the double row of huskers and the pyramidal stacks is a vista across a partly wooded level farming country, and on the right, in the middle distance, stands the great red barn overhung by lofty elms and the old-fashioned farmhouse itself. The whole scene glows with the warm color of early autumn, and the sky is covered with a thin stratus of luminous gray clouds."
"Signed at the lower right, E. Johnson.
Height, 27 ½ inches; width, 54 ½ inches."
[Annotation: “800.00 / Met”]

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. 146 (as The Corn Husking)]

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, February 27, 1907 (by purchase)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Life in America: A Special Loan Exhibition of Paintings Held during the Period of the New York World's Fair, April 24–October 29, 1939, no. 233, p. 177, as Cornhusking at Nantucket, owner The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

King, Edward. "The Value of Nationalism in Art." The Monthly Illustrator 4, no. 14 (June 1895), p. 267–68, illus., as A Husking-Bee at Nantucket.

Beckwith, Carroll. "Eastman Johnson—His Life and Works." Scribner's Magazine 40, no. 2 (August 1906), p. 254 [possibly, as Corn Husking].

Walton, William. "Eastman Johnson, Painter." Scribner's Magazine 40 (September 1906), p. 274, illus., as Corn Husking.

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. 146, as The Corn Husking.

"Eastman Johnson Sale." American Art News 5, no. 20 (March 2, 1907), p. 3, as The Corn Husking.

Catalogue of Paintings. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1931, p. 191.

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. 62, no. 54, as Corn Husking at Nantucket.

Crosby, Everett U. Eastman Johnson at Nantucket: His Paintings and Sketches of Nantucket People and Scenes. Nantucket, MA, 1944, p. 12, 22, C.2, as Corn Husking at Nantucket.

Hills, Patricia. Eastman Johnson: Retrospective Exhibition. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1972. Exhibition catalogue (1972 Whitney Museum), p. 90, illus. (mistakenly titled as Art Institute of Chicago version, as Cornhusking Bee).