"The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket" by Eastman Johnson
"By
late September or early October in 1879, Eastman Johnson and his family
had arrived in Nantucket and he began in earnest the cranberry harvest
subject for which he first made studies in 1875. He wrote: 'I was taken
with my cranberry fit as soon as I arrived... as they began picking down
in the meadow... and I have done nothing else since I have been here,
not a thing. I have no finished picture at all, maybe further off than
ever.'
By mid-October he clearly was immersed in completing the
exhaustive series of oil sketches that preceded his impressive finished
canvas, 'The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket.' Johnson's scene
was set on a coastal heath near his home. In the completed composition,
the town of Nantucket lies in the distance at the left, with the Brant
Point Light farther to the left, and a characteristic Nantucket windmill
scenically placed nearer the center of the image. His studies for the
painting are among his most visually stunning works of the decade,
revealing his now superb ability to summarize the effects of natural
light on moving forms and his ease in the practice of the reductive,
expressive sketch.
In a number of these studies, Johnson
experimented temporarily with motifs that do not appear in the final
work. In his more advanced compositional studies, he experimented with
various vantage points, contrasting times of day, and alternate
arrangements of the figural composition. He did not easily achieve the
complex arrangement of his finished canvas. A letter to a friend
revealed his frustration, as well as a reluctance, to make the
disruptive move back to New York at the season's close. Determined to
finish, he remained on the island, with his family, well into December.
When his finished work, 'The Cranberry Harvest, Island of
Nantucket,' was exhibited at the National Academy exhibition that
spring, the painting was repeatedly singled out as among the finest of
the more than seven hundred pictures on view. Centrally placed on a
prominent wall, it was widely admired for its brilliant effects of
sunlight and its naturally varied figure composition. Within a year, it
was purchased by the wealthy New Yorker Auguste Richard."
A few of his studies for "Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket"
To be continued
(Excerpts from "Eastman Johnson: Painting America" by Teresa Carbone
and Patricia Hills.)
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