Eastman Johnson

images from the athenaeum.org

I think I will change things up a little bit and do some art history. I know you have heard me talk about how important a knowledge of art history is to a painter. and I am going continue with some posts on that. If you haven't been reading this blog for a long time or wish to refresh your memory, if you click on art history over there in the archives you will find a great number of previous entries on the subject. I have kept mostly to the Americans but there is some on Dutch painting also as I feel they are the percusers to our own democratic art.

The painting above sometimes called "My Old Kentucky Home" is actually titled ":Life in the South" represents not Kentucky but Washington DC. It was painted in 1859 and was highly acclaimed, earning Eastman Johnson admission to the National Academy of Design. He began a career as a Genre painter, representing the life of his time in America. When you look at his pictures you will see shadows of American painting that was to come, particularly Winslow Homer and even Wyeth. Johnson doesn't get as much attention as he deserves today, and I suppose it was because he was a genre painter.

A husking bee on Nantucket
Johnson studied in Dusseldorf, Germany with Emanuel Leutze, painter of "Washington crossing the Delaware". In those days American painters often went to Dusseldorf to study rather than Paris, where the next generation studied. After two years there he studied at the Hague in the Netherlands.

Johnson was born and raised in Fryeburg and Augusta, Maine. In those days Maine wasn't out in the sticks. It wasn't until the end of the wooden boat era that the population of Maine collapsed and it became a backwater. Towns like Searsport that are wide spots in the road today were major shipping capitols to the world then. Several members of Lincolns cabinet were Mainers. Eastman Johnsons father was secretary of State in the capitol of Maine Augusta and a hotelier.

If you click on this painting of a shoemaker in his shop you can see his handling, obviously influenced by the Dutch. There is a little of Wyeth (also connected to the State of Maine) in this painting.

This is a scene of Maple sugaring from Fryeburg, Maine. That must have been more of a community event in those days. In the 20th century artists like Gruppe and Hibbard would depict it as a deep woods activity carried out by hardy rustics in inexpensive plaid jackets.

This glistening jewel of a painting is called Sunday morning.

Johnson painted many picture of black America of the era and followed the Union army sketching and I assume he must have been an ardent abolitionist, a sentiment that would have been typical in northern New England in that day. If you would like to read about an artist who was not, check back through the blog and read my writing on Samuel Morse who was a racists' raciest.

Here is a painting of an escaping slave family that he based on an actual event he saw at the battle of Gettysburg. The other famous Mainer present that day was of course Joshua Chamberlain whose leading the 22nd Maines' bayonet attack at little Round Top turned the course of the battle the day before Picketts' failed charge marked the high water point of the Confederacy.

This young girl is being chided for offenses that may have been sexual in nature by this geezer in a painting called "The Reprimand".

Below is a scene from Nantucket where he was later to establish his studio, I believe I have painted on or near this location.

Below is a portrait of the artist Sanford Gifford. After the 1880's Johnson turned his attention to portraiture and painted many of the luminaries of his day including Emerson and Longfellow . He was a cofounder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and died in 1906.

Here is Johnsons' grave in Green-Wood cemetery in Brooklyn, New York

image from findagrave.com