Lot Essay
Joseph W. John was a landscape, genre and allegorical painter who frequently exhibited his work in the late 1860s and 1870s. John lived in Philadelphia and showed his works at various institutions and organizations in that city including the Union League Club and the Philadelphia Sketch Club, however he also exhibited works in Pittsburgh, Louisville and Cincinnati. This unusual painting was most likely exhibited in 1875 at the Cincinnati Industrial Exposition under the title Life's Morning and Evening.
Life's Morning and Evening owes a great debt to Thomas Cole's celebrated series The Voyage of Life, which explores in allegorical terms humankind's journey from childhood to old age. Life's Morning and Evening investigates similar themes, with carefree children gathering flowers at right symbolizing the morning of life, and an old man in a boat floating down the river at left, symbolizing evening.
The work includes symbolic elements that are consistent with the didactic intent of allegorical paintings in the late nineteenth century. The angelic figures drop garlands of flowers that spell moral precepts. The flowers floating down from above spell the words 'BE KIND.' At right the young girl gathers garlands of flowers that spell 'CHARITY' while other precepts are visible on the ground in the distance, including 'SO LOVE' and 'LIVES OF GREAT MEN.' Religious themes are evident in the hidden messages as well, seen in the flowers draped across the rocks in the foreground that spell 'GOD IS LOVE.' Such sentiments, though seemingly effusive today, were nonetheless perceived as proper moral precepts in the late nineteenth century.
Life's Morning and Evening owes a great debt to Thomas Cole's celebrated series The Voyage of Life, which explores in allegorical terms humankind's journey from childhood to old age. Life's Morning and Evening investigates similar themes, with carefree children gathering flowers at right symbolizing the morning of life, and an old man in a boat floating down the river at left, symbolizing evening.
The work includes symbolic elements that are consistent with the didactic intent of allegorical paintings in the late nineteenth century. The angelic figures drop garlands of flowers that spell moral precepts. The flowers floating down from above spell the words 'BE KIND.' At right the young girl gathers garlands of flowers that spell 'CHARITY' while other precepts are visible on the ground in the distance, including 'SO LOVE' and 'LIVES OF GREAT MEN.' Religious themes are evident in the hidden messages as well, seen in the flowers draped across the rocks in the foreground that spell 'GOD IS LOVE.' Such sentiments, though seemingly effusive today, were nonetheless perceived as proper moral precepts in the late nineteenth century.