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Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné
Patricia Hills, PhD, Founder and Director | Abigael MacGibeny, Project Manager and Co-Author

Catalogue Entry

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Photo: © 2022 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Sheet of Studies, c.1876 (Hills no. 39.1.28). Detail
Detail
Photo: Patricia Hills
[ 39.1 U.S. Figure & Landscape Sketches ]info
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39.1 U.S. Figure & Landscape Sketches

When he returned to the United States in 1856, Johnson continued to make graphite pencil sketches in notebooks. Those that have survived time generally relate to paintings he did later, such as the many sketches of Nantucket characters or for paintings he was contemplating doing in the future. —PH

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Hills no. 39.1.28
Baur no. 445
Sheet of Studies
Alternate title: Men Carrying Large Cauldron
c.1876
Graphite on buff paper
10 1/8 x 12 1/4 in. (25.7 x 31.1 cm)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of Maxim Karolik for the M. and M. Karolik Collection of American Watercolors and Drawings, 1800–1875 (56.365)
Description/Remarks

Hills, 2022: John I. H. Baur was incorrect when he assigned this drawing to the maple sugar series.

MFA Boston, M. & M. Karolik Collection of American Water Colors & Drawings, 1800–1875, Volume 1, 1962, p. 206: "At left two men, seen from behind, carrying basket; upper right two old men in hats, bust length; lower right little girl in hat, facing [sic]. The figures at left are definitely studies for the painting of 1876, 'Corn Husking at Nantucket,' [Husking Bee, Island of Nantucket] Chicago Art Institute (ill. Baur, Eastman Johnson, pl. XXXII), a variant of which is in the Metropolitan Museum, N. Y."

Baur 1940, p. 81: "Possibly a study for the maple sugar series. There are also slighter sketches of two men and a small girl."

Provenance
Likely Eastman Johnson estate/Mrs. Eastman Johnson, New York, 1906 (by bequest)
Albert Rosenthal, New Hope, Pennsylvania, until 1939 (likely by purchase from Mrs. Johnson in 1915)
Estate of Albert Rosenthal, with Albert Duveen, New York
Albert Duveen, New York, and M. Knoedler & Co., New York, February 8, 1946
Maxim Karolik, Newport, Rhode Island
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, June 7, 1956 (by gift)
References
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. 81, no. 445, as Men Carrying Large Cauldron.
MFA Boston 1962
M. & M. Karolik Collection of American Water Colors & Drawings, 1800–1875. Vol. 1. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1962. Exhibition catalogue, p. 206, no. 416, as Sheet of Studies.
Hills Examination/Opinion
Examination date(s): March 7, 2018
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Record last updated March 28, 2022. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "Sheet of Studies, c.1876 (Hills no. 39.1.28)." In Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=894 (accessed on May 2, 2025).