Cranberry Pickers Artist: Eastman Johnson (American, 1824–1906)

ca. 1878–79

American Paintings and Sculpture

On view, 2nd floor, American Art before 1900


"I was taken with my cranberry fit as soon as I arrived," wrote Eastman Johnson from his vacation home on Nantucket Island in 1879, "and have done nothing else." An industry that was barely twenty years old and of serious economic importance to the island, the annual cranberry harvest created a sense of community, bringing together generations: an old man works beside a child; a young couple leans toward one another; a baby sleeps. Johnson’s view of a community at home on the land would have appealed to urban audiences.

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

27 × 54 1/8 in. (68.6 × 137.5 cm)

Credit Line

Bequest of Christian A. Zabriskie

Accession Number

1970.56.1

Geography

Depicted Nantucket, Massachusetts, United States

Culture

American

Period

19th century

Classification

Paintings

Disclaimer

Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery’s complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of records is ongoing.

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. 147 (as The Cranberry Harvest)
Andrew C. Zabriskie, February 27, 1907 (by purchase)
Christian A. Zabriskie, his son, by 1940
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn., 1970 (by bequest)
Bibliography
  • Helen A. Cooper et al., Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: American Art from the Yale University Art Gallery, exh. cat. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 2008), 250–51, no. 142, ill
  • Patricia Hills, Eastman Johnson: Retrospective Exhibition, exh. cat. (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1972), 98, no. 86, ill
  • Everett U. Crosby, Eastman Johnson at Nantucket: His Paintings and Sketches of Nantucket People and Scenes (Nantucket, Mass.: Unknown, 1944), 12, no. C.5, ill
  • John Baur, An American Genre Painter: Eastman Johnson, 1824–1906 (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Brooklyn Museum of Art, 1940), 51, 62, no. 56
  • "Eastman Johnson Sale," American Art News 5 (March 2, 1907), 3
  • American Art Association, New York, Catalogue of Finished Pictures, Studies, and Drawings by the Late Eastman Johnson, N. A., sale cat. (February 1907), n.p., as The Cranberry Harvest, fig. no. 147
Object copyright
No Copyright - United States
Additional information

Object/Work type

figures (representations), genre (visual works), human figures (visual works), landscapes (representations), studies (visual works)

Subject

clouds hats labor men red seated figures shadows sky slavery trees women

Signed

Neither signed nor dated

Technical metadata and APIs

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