Cranberry Pickers

Eastman Johnson’s paintings of the cranberry pickers of Nantucket, Massachusetts, draw upon the uniquely magical character of the island and its inhabitants to portray idyllic scenes of post-Civil War life that rank among the artist’s most memorable work. Following Johnson’s famed cycles depicting maple sugaring and corn husking, this final genre series of his career encapsulates “Johnson's optimism and his celebration of the joys of rural labor—a labor in which the distinctions between working class and middle class were blurred—that endeared him to a generation.” (P. Hills, Eastman Johnson, New York, 1972, p. 92) With twelve works from the series in museum collections across the country, the present work is a rare example from this important series of eighteen paintings remaining in private hands. The work was acquired by Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd in 1966 and has remained in the collection of their daughter Sandra Ferry Rockefeller until now.

Johnson first visited Nantucket in 1869 or 1870 following a friend’s advice to fulfill the artist’s “desire for a quiet and incurious locality.” (as quoted in Eastman Johnson: The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket, Pasadena, California, 1990, San Diego, California, 1990, p. 33) In 1871, he bought a house and land along the Cliff at the west end of town along with another adjacent lot to use as his studio, and would return with his wife every year over the following decades. The September 1885 issue of The Century Magazine elaborates on Johnson's affinity for the island: “Nantucket, one of the rare spots which preserve the flavor and atmosphere of the olden time. The island—with its types of old men and women that are fading out elsewhere...has long been the property of Mr. Eastman Johnson. The man and the place have a natural sympathy for each other. He is a chronicler of a phase of our national life which is passing away.” (as quoted in P. Hills, The Genre Painting of Eastman Johnson: The Sources and Development of His Style and Themes, Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1973, pp. 144-45)

During the autumn months, Johnson observed the seasonal tradition of cranberry picking in the sandy bog along the Cliff. He was immediately enthused by the scene before him and began to work on the subject as early as 1874. Between 1876 and 1879, he painted a series of studies for a monumental painting, The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket which he would finish in 1880 (Timken Museum of Art, San Diego, California). In a letter from 1879 to his friend, the artist Jervis McEntee, Johnson writes, “I was taken with my cranberry fit as soon as I arrived (some people have rose fever yearly—I have the cranberry fever) as they began picking down on the meadow a day or two after we arrived and I have done nothing else since I have been here, not a thing...” (as quoted in Eastman Johnson: The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket, p. 31)

The majority of Johnson’s studies of the cranberry pickers are in institutional collections, including the Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts; Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, Arizona; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan; Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri; Nantucket Historical Association, Nantucket, Massachusetts; Philadelphia Art Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut. Of the six remaining in private hands, two are unlocated, and the present work is the largest in scale.

Here, Johnson focuses on a charming group of workers that represent the range of locals who participated in the harvest, from the young girl in a straw hat to the elder man seated beside her. The work most closely relates to the first large-scale version Johnson completed, The Cranberry Harvest at Yale University, which features in its right half the same young man emptying his bucket into a canvas sack, two elegantly behatted ladies and even the woman carrying a heavy basket seen in the left background of the present work. In the distance, beyond the grassy bog and sandy dunes, the Brant Point Light sets the coastal scene.

Johnson’s cranberry pickers parallel Winslow Homer’s exploration of similar themes, as well as the work of the French Barbizon painters. Yet, Johnson adds his own understanding of Nantucket culture, as well as a sense of spontaneous observation to his scenes. “The true magic of the painting,” as Marc Simpson writes of the final version, “lies in the effectiveness of Johnson’s summary technique in evoking air and light…As do the most exciting paintings of his time, Johnson’s treads between skilled illusion and a vigorous appreciation of freely applied paint.” Particularly evident in the present work’s wonderfully gestural recording of the moment, “The impression is of an outdoor scene freshly observed and recorded in the out-of-doors…” (Eastman Johnson: The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket, p. 33)

Johnson’s Nantucket series has been celebrated ever since the Timken picture’s debut at the National Academy of Design in spring 1880, when the New York Herald critic praised, “Among the over seven hundred works hung one of the very best and most creditable to American art is Eastman Johnson's scene on a cranberry patch…It is an excellent work and a credit to American art.” (March 27, 1880)