Creative Commons License
Creative Commons License
Creative Commons License
The Nantucket School of Philosophy
(18th and 19th Centuries )
In this work, Johnson's last dated painting of everyday life, a group of elderly men, seated around a stove in a cobbler's shop, reminisces about the past. Two years after the picture was completed, Johnson identified the philosophers: Captain Haggerty, the shoemaker; Captain Moore, the talker; and on the left, leaning on his hand, Captain Ray. The other captains, he noted, were by then already deceased.
Like a number of his fellow genre painters, the Boston artist trained abroad in Düsseldorf, Germany, and later at The Hague in the Netherlands, where he became familiar with Dutch 17th-century art. Between 1870 and 1887, Johnson spent the summer and autumn months working in Nantucket, Massachusetts.
Inscription
Provenance
Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object. Learn more about provenance at the Walters.
Acquired by Edward D. Adams, New York. Acquired by Knoedler and Co., New York; Sale, Knoedler and Co., New York, April 5, 1924 [1]; purchased by Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1924; by bequest to Walters Art Museum, 1931.
[1] Ed King's Notebook, Walters-Anderson Correspondence, etc. list this date as April 3, 1924 conflicting the date of the Knoedler and Co. Sale
Exhibitions
| 2001 | The American Artist as Painter and Draftsman. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. |
| 1999-2000 | Eastman Johnson: Painting America. Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn; San Diego Museum Of Art, San Diego; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle. |
| 1993 | Revisiting the White City: American Art at the 1893 World's Fair. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington. |
Conservation
| Date | Description | Narrative |
|---|---|---|
| 10/1/1944 | Treatment | cleaned; coated; examined for exhibition; filled; inpainted; lined; reconstructed; surface cleaned |
| 12/1/1988 | Treatment | other |
Measurements
H: 23 1/4 x W: 31 11/16 in. (59 x 80.5 cm); Framed: H: 34 3/4 x W: 43 1/4 x D: 2 1/2 in. (88.3 x 109.9 x 6.4 cm)
Credit Line
Acquired by Henry Walters, 1924
Location in Museum
Not on view
Accession Number
In libraries, galleries, museums, and archives, an accession number is a unique identifier assigned to each object in the collection.
In libraries, galleries, museums, and archives, an accession number is a unique identifier assigned to each object in the collection.
37.311