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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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[ 09.2 Black Women ]info
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09.2 Black Women

During the 1860s Johnson painted Black men, women, and children that bestow on them dignity, intelligence, and grace. Many in his family, including his sister Harriet May and her husband Reverend Joseph May were ardent abolitionists. To Johnson, Blacks were not subjects to be ridiculed or satirized. —PH

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Hills no. 9.2.3
1907 Sale no. 128
Dinnertime and Appletime in Old Virginia
Alternate title: possibly Dinner Time in Old Virginia
c.1862–65
Oil
22 x 25 1/2 in. (55.9 x 64.8 cm)
Present whereabouts unknown
Description / Remarks

Hills, 2021: Winslow Homer also did genre paintings of women blowing on horns to call the men working in the fields back to lunch. It was Johnson, however, who depicted Black women at this task. This painting closely matches the description of Johnson's painting Union Soldiers Accepting a Drink (Carnegie Museum of Art), except that the Black woman in the latter is one of four figures and she is pouring from a bottle into a glass instead of blowing on a dinner horn.

Although John I. H. Baur owned and annotated a copy of the catalogue of Johnson's 1907 Estate Sale, he did not include this work in his own 1940 catalogue listing; he must have obtained it after publication.

1907 Estate Sale info
No. 128: "In the right foreground is the corner of a wooden house, which stands on a stone wall laid without mortar, and in the doorway stands a negro woman blowing a tin horn, apparently summoning the men to dinner. An apple tree, laden with fruit, and an arch of climbing roses and other vines cast a broad shadow across the foreground, through which a tiny brook runs over a rocky bed. In the middle distance is seen an old-fashioned garden, with sunflowers and vegetables, all in brilliant sunlight, and beyond a vista over a meadow to a blue hill in the horizon."
"Height, 22 inches; length, 25 ½ inches"
[Annotation: “75.00”]
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. 128 (as Dinnertime and Appletime in Old Virginia)]
Present whereabouts unknown
Exhibitions
1907a Century Association
Century Association, New York, Memorial Exhibition of Eastman Johnson, February 9–13, 1907, [possibly, as Dinner Time in Old Virginia].
References
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. 128, as Dinnertime and Appletime in Old Virginia.
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Keywords
Record last updated April 7, 2022. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
Citation: Hills, Patricia, and Abigael MacGibeny. "Dinnertime and Appletime in Old Virginia, c.1862–65 (Hills no. 9.2.3)." Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné. www.eastmanjohnson.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=96 (accessed on April 18, 2024).