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Artist
Eastman Johnson
Title
The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket
Date
1880
Culture
American
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
69.5 x 138.4 cm (27-3/8 x 54-1/2 in.)
Accession Number
1972:002
Credit Line
Eastman Johnson, The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket, 1880, oil on canvas, 69.5 x 138.4 cm (27-3/8 x 54-1/2 in.), Putnam Foundation, Timken Museum of Art
Full view of The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket
Description
In 1870, after searching for aspects of American rural life to use as subjects for ambitious paintings, Johnson began to draw inspiration from Nantucket Island south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. With this view of a cranberry harvest, he successfully realized his efforts to paint a celebration of New England outdoor life. The work also marks a significant achievement in the history of American art. Using an evocative, rather than descriptive, technique, Johnson lavishes attention on the landscape, from the dry grasses of the cranberry bog to the distant and accurate view of Nantucket's spires and lighthouse. The principle focus of this scene washed by late-afternoon light is the configuration of pickers, and their poses and gestures. The standing woman in the center who looks at a boy carrying an infant to her creates a narrative
suggesting that the artist recorded the scene as he witnessed it.

Related Information / Media

Provenance

Auguste Richard, 1880–at least 1893 [1]; With Bernard Bivall, London, 1969; With Peter Tillou, Inc., Litchfield, Connecticut, and Vose Galleries, Boston; Acquired by the Putnam Foundation, 1972
Provenance Notes:
  • [1] Johnson submitted The Cranberry Harvest to the National Academy of Design spring exhibition in 1880. During the next several years, the painting was on public view at the newly opened uptown galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and later, in 1893, at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. For over 70 years afterward, however, the painting was unrecorded.

Exhibited

New York, National Academy of Design, 1880, Fifty-fifth Annual Exhibition of the National Academy of Design, no. 382; New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 1881-April 1882, Loan Collection of Paintings and Sculpture in the West Galleries and the Grand Hall, no. 10, and May-October 1882, no. 174; Chicago, World's Columbian Exposition, 1893, no. 621; Atlanta, The High Museum of Art, 1971, The Beckoning Land, no. 44; New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1972, Eastman Johnson, cat. by Patricia Hills, pp. 92,97, 101, no. 97,ill.; Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, 1980, American Light: The Luminist Movement, pp. 48, 49, 146, fig. 46; Evanston,
Ill., Terra Museum of American Art, 1981, Life in Nineteenth-Century America, p. 35, no. 2, frontispiece; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1983,
A New World: Masterpieces of American Painting, 1760-1910, pp. 270-72, no. 6o, ill.; San Diego, Timken Art Gallery; The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; New Haven, Conn., Yale University Art Gallery; and New York, National Academy of Design, 1990-91, Eastman Johnson: "The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket," cat. by Marc Simpson, Sally Mills, and Patricia Hills.

Literature

S. G. W. Benjamin, "The Exhibitions. V. — National Academy of Design," American Art Review 1 (1879-80): 309; "The Academy Exhibition,"
The Evening Post, March 26, 1880; "National Academy of Design,” New York Commercial Advertiser, March 27, 1880; "Fifty-fifth Annual Exhibition of the National Academy of Design – Private View Day – First Article," New York Herald, March 27, 1880; "The Academy Exhibition," The New-York Times, March 27, 1880; "The Academy Exhibition, "The World, March 27, 1880; "Fifty-fifth Annual Exhibition of
the National Academy – Opening Reception –in the South Gallery-Second Notice," New York Herald, March 30, 1880; "National
Academy of Design Exhibition. First Notice,"Art Interchange 4 (March 31, 1880): 54-55; "The New York Spring Exhibitions. I. The
National Academy Exhibition," Art Journal (New York) 6 (1880): 154; "National Academy of Design. Fifty-fifth Annual Exhibition (Third Article)," The New-York Daily Tribune, April 18, 1880; Inquirer and Mirror, April 24, 1880; "Exhibition of the Academy of Design,"Art Amateur
2 (May 1880): 112; M[ariana] G[riswold] van Rensselaer," Spring Exhibitions and Picture-Sales in New York. – II, ”American Architect and
Building News 7 (May 8, 188o): 201; S. G. W. Benjamin, "A Representative American," Magazine of Art 5 (1882): 489, ill., and re-printed
in Wilfrid Meynell, ed., Some Modern Artists and Their Work (London, 1883), pp. 153-59, ill., and id., The Modern School of Art, 3 vols. (London, n.d. [probably 1886-88]), 1:225-32, ill.; Clarence Cook, Art and Artists of Our Time, 3 vols. (New York, 1888), 3:245, 263, ill.; William A. Coffin, "The Century's American Artist Series. Eastman Johnson," Century Magazine 48 (October 1894): 958; Sadakichi
Hartmann, "Eastman Johnson: American Genre Painter," International Studio 34 (April 1908): 109, ill.; Patricia Hills, The Genre Painting
of Eastman Johnson: Sources and Development of His Style and Themes (New York, 1977), pp. 151-54, 724, ill.; Hermann Warner Williams,
Jr., Mirror to the American Past (Greenwich, Conn., 1973), pp. 149-50, fig. 139; Clay Lancaster, Nantucket in the Nineteenth Century (New
York, 1979), p. 15; Robert A. di Curcio, Art on Nantucket: The History of Painting on Nantucket Island (Nantucket, Mass., 1982);
Timken Art Gallery: European and American Works of Art in the Putnam Foundation Collection (San Diego,1983), pp. 104-5,125-26, no. 39, ill.

Note

This record has been reviewed by Timken Museum of Art staff and may be incomplete or contain errors. Our records are constantly revised. Inquiries about provenance are advised to contact the Director of Curatorial Affairs: curator@timkenmuseum.org.