During the summer months of 1857 Johnson visited the George Washington homestead at Mount Vernon, Virginia, with his friend Louis Mignot. Johnson painted one or two paintings, but returned the following summer to paint several more. During the 1850s the building and its grounds had fallen into disrepair. A new veneration of Washington, spurred on by growing sectional political conflicts between North and South, led to the formation of a committee of women to restore the site. They formed the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association of the Union. The painter Thomas Rossiter brought attention to the situation by writing a plea in The Crayon (September 1858):
The nation has permitted his tomb to crumble, the storms to despoil his mansion, the weeds to grow over his footsteps and his door-sill, with an effort to preserve the sacred domain. At last, the women of the land—God bless them! Having waited and hoped in vain for a recognition of the sanctity of Mount Vernon, moved with feminine zeal and loyalty to the noble dead, have combined, organized and purchased the estate.
[Adapted from Hills, The Genre Painting of Eastman Johnson, pp. 54–55]. —PH
Mount Vernon Ladies' Association catalogue entry, 2017: "Oil on board genre painting of African-American men, women, and children at rest along the north end of George Washington’s Mount Vernon mansion. The composition of buildings moving from left to right includes the mansion; the covered, colonnade walkway; north dependency (or Servants’ Hall); the gardener’s house; and a broken wooden fence connecting the north dependency and the gardener’s house. A male African-American worker sits in the open doorway to the Servants’ Hall while an African-American child stands nearby in the grass and additional people sit and stand under the colonnade and in front of the east side of the piazza. The buildings are framed by tall trees on the right and an open, atmospheric sky on the upper left. This perspective of the house and dramatic visual focus on the service buildings highlights the relationship of slave spaces to the public spaces reserved for the Washington family, their guests, and visitors to the estate. The painting is framed with a wooden, gilded frame." (Amy Hudson Henderson)
"Signed at the lower right, E. J., Mount Vernon, 1857.
Height, 13 ½ inches; width, 24 5/8 inches."
[Annotation: “115.00 / L. Holbrook”]
Verso of frame:
1) Fraunces Tavern Museum accession number, written in red at top center of frame: 1912.2.1
2) Written in black along the bottom edge of the frame: 9203;107; -1; 187
3) Christies’ New York, Important American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, 20 May 2009 lot number label: 78
4) Two stickers on proper left top of frame that have not been transcribed and are not decipherable in photographs
Christie's 2009-03-28: Precise detail on edges of fence. Precise architectural detail. Figures—nice—highlights on edges. Almost like pen lines. Sky is typical ziggley—arches. Massing of trees—good. 5 figures. Green [colors are] right. Shadow in front.
