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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: Reproduced by permission
Old Man Sleeping in Chair, 1878 (Hills no. 26.6.24). Inscription
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Photo: Reproduced by permission
[ 26.6 Nantucket Portraits and Types ]info
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26.6 Nantucket Portraits and Types

Like many artists in the nineteenth century, Johnson often did paintings of “types” that are actually identifiable portraits. For example, the painting John F. Sylvia shows a Nantucket miller in his barn looking up from his account books to look out the window. Called at one time The Falling Market, the subject suggests a man perhaps assessing his position in the economy in the early years of the 1870s when a recession gripped the nation. —PH

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Hills no. 26.6.24
Baur no. 71
Old Man Sleeping in Chair
Alternate titles: possibly Old Man; Old Man Sleeping
1878
Locale: Nantucket, Massachusetts
Oil on academy board
10 x 7 1/2 in. (25.4 x 19 cm)
Signed and dated lower left: E. Johnson/78
Private collection
Description / Remarks

Hills, 2021: The subject may be Captain Nathan A. Manter.

American Art Galleries sale catalogue, 1936: "Waist length figure in profile to the right of an old man resting his head against his right hand, which clutches the back of a chair; he wears a top hat and dark green coat. Lighted from upper left, before a dark brown background."

Provenance
[Possibly American Art Association, New York, December 6–7, 1900, Modern Oil Paintings, Water Colors and Drawings by American and Foreign Artists, no. 141 (as Old Man)]
Mrs. Peter W. Rouss
[American Art Association, New York, October 22, 1936, French Furniture, French and American Paintings, [etc.] Comprising the Entire Contents of the Former Residence of Mrs. Peter W. Rouss, no. 11 (as Old Man Sleeping)]
Mrs. Edward Ward McMahon, Pelham, New York, by 1940
Mrs. H. J. Schwartz, Flushing, Long Island, New York, by 1944
Private collection, by May 2015
References
AAA 1900
Catalogue of Nearly Two Hundred Modern Oil Paintings, Water Colors and Drawings by American and Foreign Artists. New York: American Art Association, December 1900. Sale catalogue, n.p., no. 141 [possibly, as Old Man].
AAA 1936
French Furniture, French and American Paintings, Etc. Comprising the Entire Contents of the Former Residence of Mrs. Peter W. Rouss. New York: American Art Association, October 1936. Sale catalogue, p. 4, no. 11, as Old Man Sleeping.
Baur 1940
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. 63, no. 71, as Old Man Sleeping in Chair.
Crosby 1944
Crosby, Everett U. Eastman Johnson at Nantucket: His Paintings and Sketches of Nantucket People and Scenes. Nantucket, MA, 1944, pp. 18, 57, no. C.46, as Old Man Sleeping in Chair.
Keywords
Record last updated July 29, 2021. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "Old Man Sleeping in Chair, 1878 (Hills no. 26.6.24)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=443 (accessed on April 18, 2024).