Lot Essay
RELATED LITERATURE:
Patricia Hills, The Genre Painting of Eastman Johnson: The Sources and Development of His Style and Themes, New York, 1977, p. 143
According to Patricia Hills, Johnson painted many pictures of children in barns or holding rabbits when he visited his sister Harriet Johnson May and her husband and children in Kennebunkport, Maine. Some of the paintings bear the dates 1877 and 1878.
Johnson seemed to like the effects of bright sunlight streaming into the dark interior of the barn and highlighting bits of straw and the rumpled country clothes of the children. Such paintings appealed to the critic S. G. W. Benjamin, who wrote of The Confab Modern School of Art (New York: Cassell & Company, 1883), p. 228.
"A little boy and girl six or seven years old are having an innocent little chat in a haymow; that is, they are resting from their romp on a beam in a barn, and enjoying an infantile flirtation. It is an idyll of childhood."
Another version of The Confab is in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford.
This lot may be exempt from sales tax, as set forth in the Sales Tax Notice at the front of the catalogue.
Patricia Hills, The Genre Painting of Eastman Johnson: The Sources and Development of His Style and Themes, New York, 1977, p. 143
According to Patricia Hills, Johnson painted many pictures of children in barns or holding rabbits when he visited his sister Harriet Johnson May and her husband and children in Kennebunkport, Maine. Some of the paintings bear the dates 1877 and 1878.
Johnson seemed to like the effects of bright sunlight streaming into the dark interior of the barn and highlighting bits of straw and the rumpled country clothes of the children. Such paintings appealed to the critic S. G. W. Benjamin, who wrote of The Confab Modern School of Art (New York: Cassell & Company, 1883), p. 228.
"A little boy and girl six or seven years old are having an innocent little chat in a haymow; that is, they are resting from their romp on a beam in a barn, and enjoying an infantile flirtation. It is an idyll of childhood."
Another version of The Confab is in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford.
This lot may be exempt from sales tax, as set forth in the Sales Tax Notice at the front of the catalogue.