Eastman Johnson (American 1824-1906)
“Crossing the Stream, 1866”, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right E. Johnson 66’.
21 in. x 17 in.

Provenance:

The Artist
General Benjamin Rush Cowen, of Washington, D.C. (also lived in Bellaire and Cincinnati, Ohio, and Delaware), c. 1870s
Thence by descent in the family to
Mrs. William Wyatt Breckinridge (Cowen’s granddaughter), Montrose, Alabama, by 1954
Mrs. J. A. Barnard, New York
Private Collection, New York, by 1973
Private Collection, Massachusetts
Private Collection, Massachusetts, 2000—present

Exhibition History:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Artists’ Fund Society, February 1867, no. 71, as CROSSING THE BROOK (listed as being in the collection of the Artist)

New York, Kennedy Galleries, Inc., American Masters – 18th and 19th Centuries, March 14 – April 7, 1973, no. 27, as CROSSING THE BROOK

New York, Kennedy Galleries, Art of America: Selected Painting and Sculpture, 1770-1981, November 11, 1981 – January 15, 1982, no. 4, as CROSSING A STREAM

New York, Babcock Galleries, From the Light of Distant Skies: A Selection of 19th Century American Paintings, April 8 – August 11, 2010, no. 8, as CROSSING THE STREAM

New York, Driscoll Babcock Galleries, Refuge and Remembrance: Landscape Painting in the Civil War Era, May 16 – June 22, 2013, as CROSSING THE STREAM

Selected Literature:

Artist’s Fund Society of Philadelphia: Catalogue of the Exhibition, Philadelphia: Artists’ Fund Society, 1867, no. 71, listed in the catalogue as being in the collection of Eastman Johnson, as CROSSING THE BROOK

Henry T. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists, New York: G.P. Putnam and Son, 1870, p. 471, as CROSSING A STREAM

Clara Erskine Clement and Laurence Hutton, Artists of the Nineteenth Century and their Works, Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1894, vol. 2, page 11, as CROSSING A STREAM

American Masters – 18th and 19th Centuries, New York: Kennedy Galleries, 1973, p. 30, no. 27, illustrated, as CROSSING THE BROOK

Patricia Hills, The Genre Painting of Eastman Johnson: The Sources and Development of His Style and Themes (doctoral dissertation), New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1977, p. 135, as PIG-A-BACK

Art of America: Selected Painting and Sculpture, 1770-1981, New York: Kennedy Galleries, 1981, p. 4, no. 4, as CROSSING A STREAM, c. 1865

Additional Documentation:

Frick Art Reference Library, New York, No. 118-8A
(Catalogued in 1954 as part of a National Endowment of the Humanities Grant)

Related Works:

GATHERING LILIES, 1865
Oil on board, 18 1⁄2 x 15 1⁄4 inches
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

BOY FISHING, 1860s (also known as THE FISHERMAN) Oil on canvas, 9 1⁄4 x 7 inches
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

This superb genre painting has been well-documented since 1867, the year following its completion. To the best our gallery’s knowledge, it maintains an unbroken provenance dating back to the year of its creation. CROSSING THE BROOK was first exhibited at the Artists’ Fund Society of Philadelphia in 1867, at which time it was listed in the exhibition catalogue as being in the collection of the Artist.

It was purchased in the 1870s by General Benjamin Rush Cowen (a Union Army general in the Civil War who had previously been Ohio’s Secretary of State). Documentation on this painting suggests that Cowen was its first owner. The painting stayed within the family for at least 85 years, and by 1954 it was in the collection of Cowen’s granddaughter, Mrs. William Wyatt Breckinridge. Since that time, the painting has been in private collections in New York and Massachusetts.

In addition, CROSSING THE BROOK is a major technical and artistic achievement that received critical praise in two of the most important reference guides from the 19th
century. In Book on the Artists, critic Henry Tuckerman identifies CROSSING A STREAM as a standout example of Johnson’s work. Tuckerman notes the work has “simple, natural, yet infinitely suggestive themes… treated with remarkable skill and meaning. Expression is [Johnson’s] forte – not dramatic or historical so much as human expression.” In Artists of the Nineteenth Century and Their Works, Clara Erskine Clement and Hutton list CROSSING THE STREAM as one of several notable examples of Johnson’s early work; a “picture of American domestic life … in which he so decidedly excels.”

In the mid-1860s Johnson created two additional paintings which feature a similar setting of a lily pond in the countryside: GATHERING LILIES, 1865 (Oil on board, 18 1⁄2 x 15 1⁄4 inches), now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC and BOY FISHING, 1860s (also known as THE FISHERMAN, Oil on canvas, 9 1⁄4 x 7 inches), now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Eastman Johnson scholar Patricia Hills has identified this group of paintings as an important step in Johnson’s stylistic development in his “progression towards brighter light and stronger oppositions in light and shadow.” (1)

This painting’s highly distinguished provenance, well-documented literature and exhibitions record, technical accomplishment and scholarly recognition all coalesce into a rare acquisition opportunity.

(1) Patricia Hills, The Genre Painting of Eastman Johnson: The Sources and Development of His Style and Themes (doctoral dissertation), New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1977, p. 136.