Cranberry Pickers, Nantucket

Artist Eastman Johnson (1824 - 1906)

Dateca. 1879

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions19 x 43 1/2 in. (48.3 x 110.5 cm)
Framed: 34 3/4 x 59 1/2 x 4 1/2 in. (88.3 x 151.1 x 11.4 cm)

ClassificationsPainting

Credit LineCrystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2010.68

Signedl.r.: E.J

Accession number 2010.68

On View

Not on view

ProvenancePrivate Collection; purchased by Richard A. Manoogian [b. 1936], Detroit, MI, 1989; to (Michael Altman Fine Art and Advisory Services, New York, NY); purchased by a private foundation for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, 2004
Label TextThis is one of many studies of cranberry pickers on Nantucket’s north shore painted by Eastman Johnson. In the center of the extreme horizontal composition, a stoic woman stands looking out to the community of mostly women and children. The scene is not only nostalgic for rural life, but signals the central role of women in the recovery of the nation, which lost nearly one-fifth of its male population during the Civil War.

Este es uno de los muchos estudios que Eastman Johnson pintó, protagonizado por recolectores de arándanos de la costa norte de Nantucket. En el centro de la composición extremadamente horizontal, una mujer se levanta estoica sobre la comunidad, compuesta en su mayoría por niños y mujeres. Esta escena no solo transmite nostalgia por la vida campestre, sino que además indica el papel fundamental de la mujer en la recuperación del país, el cual perdió casi una quinta parte de su población masculina durante la Guerra de Secesión.