loading loading
Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné
Patricia Hills, PhD, Founder and Director | Abigael MacGibeny, MA, Project Manager

Catalogue Entry

enlarge
Photo: Courtesy of Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association
06.0 Mount Vernon, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

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

View all works in this theme »

Hills no. 6.0.1
Baur no. 35 / 1907 Sale no. 107
Mount Vernon—1857
Mount Vernon Ladies' Association title: The Old Mount Vernon
Alternate titles: Exterior of Mount Vernon, 1857; Mount Vernon, 1857; The Exterior of Mt. Vernon; The Old Mt. Vernon
1857
Oil on board
14 x 24 3/4 in. (35.6 x 62.9 cm)
Initialed and dated lower right: E. J. Mt. Vernon 1857
This catalogue raisonné strives to reproduce the available historical information, as it was written in the period, while acknowledging that readers today may find many of these terms objectionable or racist. Please see the Racist Language/Negative Stereotypes Statement »
Description / Remarks

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)

1907 Estate Sale info
No. 107: "The artist has taken the side view as being the more picturesque, instead of the front view or façade ordinarily depicted. Figures are to be seen moving about between the graceful columns of the pergola. The barn with groom seated in the doorway; a pickaninny is straying across the lawn. The sunlight illumines the interior of the pergola and the front portico and gently graded lawn, also the gatehouse in rear of barn. Some fine trees shade the place."
"Signed at the lower right, E. J., Mount Vernon, 1857.
Height, 13 ½ inches; width, 24 5/8 inches."
[Annotation: “115.00 / L. Holbrook”]
Markings
Verso of board: Three stickers that have not been transcribed and are not decipherable in photographs

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
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. 107 (as Mount Vernon—1857)]
Levi D. Holbrook, February 27, 1907 (by purchase)
Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York, Inc. (Fraunces Tavern Museum), New York, 1912 (by gift)
[Christie's, May 20, 2009, lot 78, Property from the Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York, Inc. (as The Old Mount Vernon)]
Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, Mount Vernon, Virginia, May 20, 2009 (by purchase)
Exhibitions
1907a Century Association
Century Association, New York, Memorial Exhibition of Eastman Johnson, February 9–13, 1907, as The Exterior of Mt. Vernon.
1999 Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York, Eastman Johnson: Painting America, October 29, 1999–February 6, 2000. (Exhibition catalogue: Carbone and Hills 1999), no. 68. Traveled to: San Diego Museum of Fine Arts, San Diego, February 25–May 21, 2000; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, June 8–September 10, 2000.
2008 University of Virginia Art Museum
University of Virginia Art Museum, Charlottesville, Virginia, The Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art, January 25–April 2, 2008. Traveled to: Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina, May 9–August 3, 2008; Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia, August 23–October 19, 2008.
2010 MVLA
Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, Mount Vernon, Virginia, Bringing Them Home: 150 Years of Restoring the Washington Collection, February 13, 2010–January 8, 2012.
2012 SAAM
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., The Civil War and American Art, November 16, 2012–April 28, 2013, no. 63. Traveled to: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, May 21–September 2, 2013.
2015 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, Spotlight Loan: Eastman Johnson’s Views of Mount Vernon, August 4, 2015–February 11, 2016.
2020 SAAM
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture, March 20–August 16, 2020.
References
Walton 1906
Walton, William. "Eastman Johnson, Painter." Scribner's Magazine 40 (September 1906), p. 272.
Johnson, Elizabeth 1907
Elizabeth Johnson letter to the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, December 1, 1907, Richard Rathburn Letters, 1906–10, Archives of American Art, frames 851–56, reel 2227. The letter includes the handwritten annotation "1906.", "I have a series of four oil paintings of Mt. Vernon, its exterior painted in 1857, and one of the Tomb of Washington…They are absolutely true to nature to the place, that is Mt. Vernon."
Library of Congress Copyright Office 1907
Library of Congress Copyright Office. Catalogue of Copyright Entries, Part 4: Engravings, Cuts, and Prints; Chromos and Lithographs; Photographs; Fine Arts; New Series. Volume 2, nos. 1–52, January–December, 1907. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1907, p. 223, no. 8042, as Exterior of Mount Vernon, 1857, copyright notice issued to Mrs. Eastman Johnson. "A side view showing porch, house, window with columns, cupola, porch in rear with little figures, the barn, the groom seated in doorway, trees.," Class I, no. 20708, Feb. 6, 1907. One photograph received February 6, 1907.
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. 107, as Mount Vernon—1857.
American Art News 1907b
"Eastman Johnson Sale." American Art News 5, no. 20 (March 2, 1907).
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), no. 35, as The Old Mt. Vernon.
Carbone and Hills 1999
Carbone, Teresa A., and Patricia Hills. Eastman Johnson: Painting America. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum of Art, in association with Rizzoli International Publications, 1999. Exhibition catalogue (1999 Brooklyn Museum), p. 123, no. 68, as The Old Mount Vernon.
Vlach 2002
Vlach, John Michael. The Planter's Prospect: Privilege and Slavery in Plantation Paintings. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
Christie's 2009
Important American Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture. New York: Christie's, May 20, 2009. Sale catalogue, pp. 90-91, lot 78, illus., as The Old Mount Vernon.
Hills Examination / Opinion
Examination date(s): 1970-11-23; 2009-03-28
Examination notes: Very green grass—yellow green sunlight—dark green in shadow. Black lines touch up architectural detail—boards of fence, etc. Sunlight on man sitting in door. E.g., lightning rod, drain pipe. Sunlight in part of portico. Brushy sky. White clouds brushed into white sky. Tiny figures in background.

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.
Hills opinion letter: May 8, 2009 view »
loading
Record last updated May 31, 2022. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "Mount Vernon—1857, 1857 (Hills no. 6.0.1)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=48 (accessed on March 29, 2024).