Negro Life at the South

Object Number: 
S-225
Date: 
1859
Medium: 
Oil on linen
Dimensions: 
frame: 51 x 61 x 5 in. ( 129.5 x 154.9 x 12.7 cm ) image: 37 x 46 in. ( 94 x 116.8 cm )
Description: 
Set in the back yard of a dilapidated house, a group of slaves passes the time. The composition includes several vignettes. At center is a banjo player; at his side, a little boy has halted his play to listen to the music. A woman and her two children listen and dance. At left is a courting couple and, above them, a woman and baby watch from an upstairs window. At far right, two young girls watch as an elegant white woman and her companion emerge for the grander house next door to see the activity.
Gallery Label: 
This painting is Johnson's most famous work, and established his reputation as an artist. Though originally exhibited at the National Academy in April 1859 as Negro Life at the South, it was by 1867 popularly called Old Kentucky Home with a title taken from Stephen Foster's beloved song. He most likely began his work on this painting in 1858, and the setting was the backyard of his father's house in Washington, D.C. The white woman at right has been identified as Johnson's sister.
Bibliography: 
"Sketchings. Domestic Art Gossip," The Crayon, Vol. VI, January 1859, p, 25. "Thirty-Fourth Exhibition of the Academy of Design," New York Evening Post, April 25, 1854, n.p. "Fine Arts. National Academy of Design. First Notice," The Albion, Vol. 37, No. 19, May 7, 1859, p. 225. "National Academy of Design," New York Herald, May 8, 1859, n.p. "Sketchings. Domestic Art Gossip," The Crayon, Vol. VI, April 1859, p, 125. "Sketchings. Domestic Art Gossip," The Crayon, Vol. VI, May 1859, p, 125. "The Lounger. At the Academy Again," Harper's Weekly, Vol. 3, No. 124, May 14, 1859, p. 307 "The National Academy Exhibition," New York Semi-Weekly Tribune, May 24, 1859, p. 3. "National Academy Exhibition," Cosmopolitan Art Journal, Vol. 3, No. 3, June 1859, p. 307. "Editor's Easy Chair," Harper's Weekly, Vol. 3, June 1859, p. 126. The Crayon, Vol. VI, June 1859, p. 191. "Fine Arts," Home Journal, June 18, 1859, p. 2. "Fine Arts," Dwight's Journal of Music," September 3, 1859, p. 181. "Domestic Art Gossip," The Crayon, Vol. VII, June 1860, p, 176. "Artists' Reception for the Benefit of the Brooklyn and Long Island Fair," New York Daily Tribune, February 19, 1984, p. 2. Tuckerman, Henry T., Book of the Artists, American Artist Life, Comprising Biographical and Critical Sketches of American Artists: Preceded by an Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of Art in America, New York: P. Putnam & Son, 1867, pp. 466-71. "Fine Arts," New York Times, February 2, 1867, n.p. "American Artists," Harper's Weekly, Vol. 11, May 4, 1867, p. 274. "The Great Show at Paris," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, June/Nov, 1867, pp. 238-53. Catalogue of the Valuable Collection of Oil Paintings Formerly the Private Collection of W.P. Wright, Esq., of New Jersey, Now on View at H.W. Derby's New Art Rooms, 845 Broadway, New York, to be Positively Sold at Public Auction by Henry H. Leeds & Miner, at half past 7 o'clock, on the Evening of Monday, March 18th, 1867, New York: Henry H. Leeds & Miner, 1867, p. 13. "Fine Arts. The Wright-Derby Collection," The Evening Post, January 30, 1867, n.p. Rimmel, Eugene, Recollections of the Paris Exhibition of 18867 by Eugene Rimmel, London: Chapman and Hall, 1868, pp. 265-6. "Paintings at the Centennial Exhibition," The Art Journal, Vol. 2, 1876, pp. 283-5. "A Representative American," The Magazine of Art, Vol. 5, November 1882, p. 487. Walton, William, "Eastman Johnson, Painter," Scribner's Magazine, September 1906, pp. 263-74. Ishamn, Samuel, The History of American Painting, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1936, pp. 241-3. "American Art Comes of Age," Life Magazine, Vol. 5, October 31, 1938, pp. 27-38. Baur, John I.H., An American Genre Painter Eastman Johnson 1824-1906, New York: Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, 1940, pp. 17-8. Barker, Virgil, American Painting: History and Interpretation, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1950, pp, 609-10. Larkin, Oliver W., Art and Life in America, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960, pp. 221-2. Bauer, John I.H., Ed., The Autobiography of Worthington Whittredge 1820-1910, New York: Arno Press, 1969, pp. 54-5. Ames, Kenneth, "Eastman Johnson: The Failure of a Successful Artist," Art Journal, Vol. 29, No. 2, 1969/1970 Winter, pp. 174-83. Lynes, Russell, The Art-Makers of Nineteenth-Century America, New York: Atheneum, 1970, pp. 259-66. Hills, Patricia, Eastman Johnson, New York: Crown Publishers, 1972, pp. 32-9, 119. Rose, Barbara, "Family Entertainment," New York, Vol. 5, May 8, 1973, pp. 723-4. Parry, Ellwood, The Image of the Indian and the Black Man in American Art 1590-1900, New York: George Braziller, 1974, pp. 101-2. Honor, Hugh, The Image of the Black in Western Art, Vol. IV, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976, pp. 20-1, 187-8, 217-20, 244, 338, 341. Hills, Patricia, The Genre Painting of Eastman Johnson: The Sources and Development of His Style and Themes, New York Garland Publishing, Inc., 1977, pp. 55-60. Fox, James Edward, Iconography of the Black in American Art (1710-1900), A Dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Art History, 1979, pp. 198-207, 214-5. Cary, John H, Weinberg, Julius, Eds., The Social Fabric: American Life from 1607 to the Civil War, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1981, Cover. Koke, Richard J., American Landscape and Genre Paintings in the New York Historical Society, Vol. II, New York: The New-York Historical Society, 1982, pp. 232-4. Troyen, Carol, Innocents Abroad: American Painters at the 1867 Exposition Universelle, Paris, American Art Journal, Vol. 16, No. 4, Autumn 1984, pp. 3-29. Beckham, Sue Bridwell, "By 'N By Hard Times. . . Eastman Johnson's 'Life at the South' and American Minstrelsy," Journal of American Culture, Vol. 6, Fall 1988, pp. 19-25. Boime, Albert, The Art of Exclusion: Representing Blacks in the Nineteenth Century, Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990, pp. 106-21, 228-33. Johns, Elizabeth, American Genre Painting: The Politics of Everyday Life, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1990, pp. 127-31, 233. McElroy, Guy C., Facing History: the Black image in American art, 1710-1940, Washington and Brooklyn: Bedford Arts and Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1990.p. 55. Martin, Nona R., Negro Life at the South: Eastman Johnson's Rendition of Slavery and Miscegenation, Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Department of Art History, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, University of Pittsburgh, 1994, pp. iii-viii. 1-33. Malson, Lucien, Histoire de Jazz et de la Musique Afro-Americaine, Paris: Seuil, 1994, p. 28-9. Eisenman, Stephen F., Nineteenth Century Art: A Cricital History, London: Burlington Magazine, London: Thames and Hudson, 1994, p. 168. Hoffman, Katherine, Concepts of Identity: Historical and Contemporary Images and Portraits of Self and Family, New York: Icon Editions, 1996, pp. 61-3. Glazer, Lee, and Key, Susan, "Carry Me Back: Nostalgia for the Old South in the Nineteenth-Century Popular Culture, Journal of American Studies, Vol. 39, No. 1, The American Past and Popular Culture, April 1996, pp. 1-24. Martin, Nona, "Civil War Symbolism," Carnegie Magazine, January/February 1997, pp. 32-5. Gordon, Avery F., Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1997, pp. 137-9. Morse, P.J., The Art Bulletin, Vol. 80, No. 4, December 1998, p. 759. Richman, Jeffrey I., Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery: New York's Buried Treasure, Brooklyn: The Green-Wood Cemetery, 1998, pp. 61-3. Davis, John, "Eastman Johnson's 'Negro Life at the South' and urban slavery in Washington, D.C.¸ Art Bulletin, March 1998, pp. 1-55. Carbone, Teresa A. and Hills, Patricia, et al., Eastman Johnson: Painting America, New York: Brooklyn Museum of Art in association with Rizzoli International Publications, 1999, pp.121-65. Carbone, Teresa A. and Hills, Patricia, et al., Eastman Johnson: Painting America: A Guide to the Civil War Era Paintings, New York: Brooklyn Museum of Art in association with Rizzoli International Publications, 1999, 1 folded sheet. Levey, Bob and Levey, Jane Freundel, Washington Album: A Pictorial History of the Nation's Capital, Washington, DC: Washington Post Books, 2000, p. 40. Museum News, Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum of Art, January/February 2000, p. 20-1. Savidou-Terrono, Evdokia, For "The Boys in Blue": The Art Galleries of the Sanitary Fairs, A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, the City University of New York, New York, NY, 2002, pp. 635, 638. Harris, Michael D., Colored Pictures: Race and Visual Representation, Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003, pp. 39-51, 262-3. Burgard, Timothy Anglin, Ed., "Thomas Cole, Prometheus Bound," Masterworks of American Painting at the De Young, San Francisco: Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, 2005, pp. 146-9. Davis, John, "Change of Key: The Banjo During the Civil War and Reconstruction, Picturing the Banjo, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005, pp. 49-67, 68-9. Vedder, Lee A., "Nineteenth-century American paintings," The Magazine Antiques, January 2005, pp. 146-55. Hills, Patricia, "Cultural Racism: Resistance and Accommodation in the Civil War Art of Eastman Johnson and Thomas Nast," Seeing High & Low: Representing Social Conflict in American Visual Culture, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006, 103-17, 120-3. Brilliant, Richard, Group Dynamics: Family Portraits & Scenes of Everyday Life at the New-York Historical Society, New York, NY: The New-York Historical Society in association with The New Press, 2006, pp. 56-7. Gold, Susanna W., "Recovering Identity Nineteenth-Century African American Portraiture," American Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 4, December 2006, pp. 1167-89. Leja, Michael, "Paradoxes in American Art," Art in America: 300 Years of Innovation, New York, NY: Guggenheim Museum, 2007, pp. 27, 194-5. Morgan, Jo-Ann, Uncle Tom's Cabin: As Visual Culture, Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2007, pp. 16, 112-4, 139-42, 171-3. Walker, Kara, Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center, 2007, n.p. Fine American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture: Thursday 25 September 2008, New York, NY: Christies, 2008, p. 7. McInnis, Maurie D., "The Most Famous Plantation of All: The Politics of Painting Mount Vernon," Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art, Columbia, SC: The University of South Carolina Press, 2008, pp. 105-9, 113-4. Miller, Angela L, Berlo, Janet C., Wolf, Bryan J., Roberts, Jennifer L., American Encounters: Art, History, and Cultural Identity, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2008, pp. 267-8. Bjelajac, David, American Art: A cultural History, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2008, pp. 219-20. Weinberg, H. Barbara, and Barratt, Carrie Rebora, Eds., American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life 1765-1915, New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009, pp. 70-3, 77, 109. Braddock, Alan C., Thomas Eakins and the Cultures of Modernity, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009, pp. 19-21. Finseth, Ian Frederick, Shades of Green: Visions of Nature in the Literature of American Slavery, 1770-1860, Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2009, pp. 238-45, 258, 284-5, 332-5. Burns, Sara, and Davis, John, American Art to 1900: A Documentary History, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009, pp. 343-7. Holzer, Harold and The New-York Historical Society. "The Civil War in 50 Objects." New York: Viking, 2013.
Credit Line: 
The Robert L. Stuart Collection, the gift of his widow Mrs. Mary Stuart
Due to ongoing research, information about this object is subject to change.
Creative: Tronvig Group